THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

Rabbi  Ernest  R.  Trattner 


THE    GHOST    IN 
THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

SOME  SUGGESTIONS  AS  TO  HOW  A  HUNDRED  MILLION^ 
PEOPLE  (WHO  ARE  SUPPOSED  IN  A  VAGUE,  HELPLESS 
WAY  TO  HAUNT  THE  WHITE  HOUSE)  CAN  MAKE  THEM- 
SELVES FELT  JVITH  A  PRESIDENT— HOW  THEY  CAN 
BACK  HIM  UP— EXPRESS  THEMSELVES  TO  HIM,  BE  EX- 
PRESSED BY  HIM,  AND  GET  WHAT  THEY  WANT 

BY 

GERALD  STANLEY  LEE 

AUTHOR    OF   "CBOWDS"     AND     "INSPIRED    MILLIONAIRES" 


'The  White  House  is  haunted  by  a  vague  helpless  abstrac- 
tion,— by  a  kind  of  ghost  of  the  nation,  called  The  People' 


NEW  YORK 
E.   P.   DUTTON   &   CO. 

681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BY  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Firit  printing May,  I960 

Second  printing May,  1989 

Third  printing May.  1999 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO 
JEXXETTE  LEE 


2029146 


CONTENTS 

BOOK  I 
WHAT  THE  PEOPLE  EXPECT  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

I    GIST 3 

II    THE  LONESOMEST  JOB  ON  EARTH      ....  4 

III  THE  PRESIDENT  AND  THE  GHOST       ....  6 

IV  REAL  FOLKS  AND  THE  GHOST 12 

V    THE  GHOST  RECEIVES  AN  INVITATION    ...  16 

VI    WHAT  A  BODY  FOR  THE  GHOST  WOULD  BE  LIKE  20 

VII    THE  GHOST  GETS  DOWN  TO  BUSINESS  ...  25 
VIII    THREE  RIGHTS  OF  MAN  IN  A  DEMOCRACY — THE 

RIGHT  TO  THINK 27 

IX    THE  RIGHT  TO  BE  WAITED  ON 32 

X    THE  RIGHT  TO  WHISPER    .......  36 

XI    THE  RIGHT  TO  WHISPER  TOGETHER       ...  39 

XII    THE  RIGHT  TO  TRUST  SOMEBODY      ....  41 

XIII  THE  RIGHT  TO  VOTE  ALL  DAY 46 

XIV  THE  SKILLED  CONSUMER 48 

XV    SAMPLE  DEMOCRACIES 51 

XVI    THE  TOWN  PENDULUM 54 

XVII    THE  NATIONAL  LISTENING  MACHINE      ...  58 
XVIII    How  THE  NATIONAL  LISTENING  MACHINE  WILL 

WORK 62 

XIX    MAKING  A  RIGHT  START 64 

XX    UP  TO  THE  PEOPLE 66 

XXI    THE  WAY  FOR  A  NATION  TO  SPEAK  UP      .     .  68 

vii 


nil 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  II 


WHAT  EACH  MAN  EXPECTS  OF  HIMSELF 


G.  S.  L.  TO  HIMSELF 75 

IF  i  WERE  A  NATION 78 

WHAT  THE  MAHOGANY  DESK  is  GOING  TO  Do  81 

RULES  FOR  BEING  LIED  TO  85 


I 

II 

III 

IV 

V  GETTING  ONE  MAN  RIGHT 87 

VI  GETTING  FIFTY  MEN  RIGHT 89 

VII  ENGINEERS  IN  FOLKS '.  91 

VIII  THE  GREAT  NEW  PROFESSION 92 

IX  GETTING  PEOPLE  TO  NOTICE  FACTS  ....  97 

X  THE  FOOL  KILLERS 100 

XI  THE  WHISPERERS 102 

XII  MR.  DOOLEY,  JUDGE  GARY  AND  MR.  GOMPERS  103 

XIII  FOOLING  ONESELF  IN  POLITICS 108 

XIV  SWEARING  OFF  FROM  ONESELF  IN  TIMH      .     .  112 
XV  TECHNIQUE  FOR  NOT  BEING  FOOLED  BY  ONESELF  117 

XVI  THE  AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  A  LETTER  .     .     .     .  120 

XVII  THE  MAN  FIFTY  THREE  THOUSAND  POST  OFFICES 

FAILED  ON 124 

XVIII  CAUSES  OF  BEING  FOOLED  ABOUT  ONESELF     .  126 

XIX  LOCO-MINDEDNESS 128 

XX  FLAT-THINKING.    THINKING  IN  MB  FLAT   .     .  131 

XXI  LOST-MINDEDNESS 133 

XXII  SELF  DISCIPLINE  BY  PROXY 139 

XXIII  MACHINE  MINDEDNESS 142 

XXIV  NEW  BRAIN  TRACKS  IN  BUSINESS     ....  143 

BOOK  III 

TECHNIQUE   FOR   A   NATION'S   GETTING    ITS   WAY 

I  BIG  IN  LITTLE  147 


-CONTEXTS  IK 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

II    CONSCIOUS  CONTROL  OF  BRAIN  TRACKS       .      .  149 

III  WHAT  is  CALLED  THINKING 151 

IV  LIVING  DOWN  CELLAR  IN  ONE'S  OWN  MIND   .  156 
V    BEING  HELPED  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS       .     .  160 

VI    REFLECTIONS  ON  THE  STAIRS 166 

MI     HELPING  OTHER  PEOPLE  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS  169 

VIII     HELPING  A  NATION  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS     .  173 

IX    TECHNIQUE  FOR  LABOR  IN  GETTING  ITS  WAY  175 

X    TECHNIQUE  FOR  CAPITAL  IN  GETTING  ITS  WAY  179 

XI    PHILANDERING  AND  ALEXANDERING   ....  183 

XII    THE  FACTORY  THAT  LAY  AWAKE  ALL  NIGHT  .  185 

XIII  LISTENING  TO  JIM 191 

XIV  THE  NEW  COMPANY 196 

XV    THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR 198 

XVI     THE  BUSINESS  MAN,  THE  PROFESSIONAL  MAX 

AND  THE  ARTIST 200 

XVII    THE  NEWS-MAN 203 

XVIII    W.  J • .     .  205 

XIX    THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP 207 

XX    PROPAGANDY  PEOPLE 211 

XXI    THE  SKILLED  CONSUMERS  OF  PUBLICITY      .     .  213 

BOOK  IV 

THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  A  NATION'S  GETTING 
ITS  WAY 

I    FOURTH  OF  JULY  ALL  THE  YEAR  ROUND    .      .  217 

II    THE  VISION  AND  THE  BODY 219 

III  THE  CALL  OF  A  HUNDRED  MILLION  PEOPLB    .  222 

IV  THE  CALL  OF  A  WORLD 227 

V  MISSOURI 232 

VI    A  VICTORY  LOAN  ADVERTISEMENT  236 


x  CONTENTS 

BOOK  V 

THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  A  NATION'S  BEING 
BORN  AGAIN 

CHAPTER  PAG» 

I    RECONSTRUCTION 243 

II    NATIONAL  BIOLOGY 245 

III  THE  AIR  LINE  LEAGUE 247 

IV  THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP 250 

(1)  For  Instance •  .      .  250 

(2)  Why  The  Look-Up  Club  Looks  Up      .     .  255 

V    THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT 257 

(1)  I  +  You  =  We 257 

(2)  The  Engineer  at  Work 260 

(3)  The  Engineer  and  the  Game     ....  262 

(4)  The  American  Business  Sport    ....  264 
VI    THE  PUT-THROUGH  CLAN,  PUTS  THROUGH       .  270 

(1)  What 270 

(2)  How 272 

(3)  Psycho-Analysis 273 

(4)  Psycho-Analysis  for  a  Town      ....  276 

(5)  To-Morrow 280 

(6)  Who 281 

(7)  The  Town  Fireplace 286 

(8)  The  Sign  on  the  World 288 

BOOK  VI 
WHAT  THE  PEOPLE  EXPECT  OF  THE  PRESIDENT 

I    THE  BIG  BROTHER  OF  THE  PEOPLE        .     .     .  293 
II    THE  MAN  WHO  CARRIES  THE  BUNCH  OF  KEYS 

FOR  THE  NATION 300 

III  THE  PRESIDENT'S  TEMPERAMENT       ....  302 

IV  THE  PRESIDENT'S  RELIGION 306 

V    THE  RED  FLAG  AND  THE  WHITE  HOUBH  309 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION 

THE   MOTION   BEFORE   THE   HOUSE 

THIS  is  a  book  a  hundred  million  people  would  write 
if  they  had  time 

I  am  nominating  in  this  book — in  the  presence  of  the 
people,  the  next  President  of  the  United  States. 

The  name  is  left  blank. 

I  am  nominating  a  man  not  a  name. 

I  am  presenting  a  program  and  a  sketch  of  what  the 
next  President  will  be  like,  of  what  he  will  be  like  as  a 
fellow  human  being,  and  I  leave  the  details — his  name, 
the  color  of  his  eyes  and  the  party  he  belongs  to,  to  be 
filled  in  by  people  later. 

Here  is  his  program,  his  faith  in  the  people,  his  vision 
for  the  people  and  his  vision  for  himself. 


No  one  has  ever  nominated  a  President  in  a  book  be- 
fore. 

I  do  it  because  a  book  can  be  more  quiet,  more  sensi- 
ble and  thoughtful,  more  direct  and  human,  and  closer 
to  the  hearts  of  the  people,  than  a  convention  can. 

A  book  can  be  more  public  too — can  be  attended  by 
more  people  than  a  convention.  Only  a  few  thousand 
people  can  get  into  a  convention.  A  hundred  million 
can  get  into  a  book.  All  in  the  same  two  hours,  by 
twenty  million  lamps  thousands  of  miles  apart,  the 
people  can  ,crowd  into  a  book. 

So  in  this  book,  as  I  have  said,  I  am  merely  acting  as 

xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

the  secretary  or  employee  of  the  hundred  million  people. 
I  am  writing  a  book  a  hundred  million  people  would 
write  if  they  could,  expressing  for  them  the  kind  of 
President  for  the  next  four  years  of  our  nation — the 
most  colossal  four  years  of  the  world,  the  people  have 
ordered  in  their  hearts. 

We  are  weary  of  politicians'  politicians.  We  want 
ours.  Politicians  may  not  be  so  bad  but  during  the  war 
they  do  not  seem  to  us  to  have  done  as  well  as  most 
people.  In  the  dead-earnest  of  the  war,  with  our  Lib- 
erty Loan  and  Red  Cross  and  Council  of  Defense,  and 
our  dollar  a  year  men  we  have  half  taken  over  the  gov- 
ernment ourselves  and  we  feel  no  longer  awed  by  the 
regular  political  practitioners  or  government  tinkerers. 
They  are  not  all  alike,  of  course,  but  we  have  turned  our 
national  glass  on  them  and  have  come  to  see  through 
them — at  least  the  worst  ones  and  many  thousands  of 
them — all  these  busy  little  worms  of  public  diplomacy 
building  their  faint  vague  little  coral  islands  of  bluff 
and  unbelief  far  far  away  from  us,  out  in  the  great 
ocean  of  their  nothingness  all  by  themselves. 

Unless  the  more  common  run  of  our  typical  politicians 
see  through  themselves  before  the  conventions  come,  and 
see  that  the  people  see  through  them,  and  see  it  quick, 
their  days  are  numbered. 

Instead  of  patronizing  us  and  whispering  to  one  an- 
other behind  their  hands  about  us,  their  time  has  come 
now — in  picking  out  the  next  President  to  begin  gaz- 
ing up  to  the  countenance  of  the  people,  to  begin  listen- 
ing to  the  people's  prayer  to  God. 

The  people  are  a  new  people  since  the  war.  Out  of 
the  crash  of  empires,  out  of  threats  in  every  man 's  door- 
yard  the  people  are  praying  to  God. 


INTRODUCTION  XT 

And  they  are  voting  to  God,  too. 

The  sooner  the  two  great  political  parties  reckon  with 
this,  the  sooner  they  push  around  behind  themselves  out 
of  sight  all  the  funny  little  would-be  Presidents,  and 
all  the  little  shan't-be  politicians  running  around  like 
ants  under  the  high  heaven  of  the  faith  of  a  great  people 
picking  up  tidbits  they  dare  to  believe — and  put  for- 
ward instead  a  live  believing  hot  and  cold  human  being, 
a  man  who  will  give  up  being  President  for  what  he 
believes,  the  sooner  they  will  find  themselves  with  a 
President  on  their  hands  that  can  be  elected.  "Which- 
ever party  it  is  that  does  this,  and  does  it  first  and  does 
it  best,  will  be  the  one  that  will  be  underwritten  by  the 
people. 

The  people  of  this  country  are  to-day  in  a  religious 
mood  toward  the  great  coming  political  conventions 
and  the  questions  and  the  men  that  will  come  up  in 
them.  "We  are  on  the  whole,  in  spite  of  the  low  esti- 
mate the  majority  of  politicians  have  of  us,  straight- 
minded  and  free-hearted  people,  shrewd,  masterful  and 
devout,  praying  with  one  hand  and  keeping  from  being 
fooled  with  the  other  and  we  want  our  public  men  to 
have  courage  and  vision  for  themselves  and  for  us.  We 
give  notice  that  thousands  of  our  most  complacently 
puttering,  most  quibbly  and  fuddly  politicians  are  going 
to  be  taken  out  by  the  people,  lifted  up  by  the  people, 
and  dropped  kindly  but  firmly  over  the  edge  of  the 
world.  This  nation  is  facing  the  most  colossal,  most 
serious  and  godlike  moment  any  nation  has  ever  faced, 
and  it  does  not  propose  in  the  presence  of  forty  nations, 
in  the  presence  of  its  own  conscience,  its  own  grim  ap- 
palling hope,  to  be  trifled  with. 

So  far  as  any  one  can  see  with  the  naked  eye  the 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

quickest  and  surest  way  to  get  past  the  politicians,  to 
remind  the  politicians  of  the  real  spirit  of  the  people,  to 
loom  up  the  face  of  the  people  before  their  eyes  and 
make  them  suddenly  take  the  people  more  seriously  than 
they  take  themselves,  is  with  a  book.  In  a  book  a  Presi- 
dent can  be  nominated  by  acclamation — by  a  kind  of 
silent  acclamation.  In  a  book,  without  giving  any  name 
or  pointing  anybody  out  at  least  the  soul  of  a  President 
can  be  ordered  by  a  people. 

We  will  publish  upon  the  housetops  the  hopes  and  the 
prayers  and  the  wills  of  the  people. 

Then  let  the  conventions  feel  the  housetops  looking 
down  on  them  when  they  meet. 

In  a  book  published  in  a  hundred  newspapers  one 
week,  wedged  into  covers  across  a  nation  another,  the 
people  with  one  single  national  stroke  can  put  what  they 
want  before  the  country — a  hundred  million  people  in  a 
book  can  rise  to  make  a  motion. 

We  will  not  wait  to  be  cornered  by  our  politicians  into 
a  convention  to  which  we  cannot  go.  We  will  not  wait 
to  be  told  three  months  too  late,  to  pick  out — out  of 
two  men  we  did  not  want,  the  man  we  will  have  to  take. 
The  short-cut  way  for  us  as  the  people  of  this  country 
to  take  the  initiative  with  our  politicians  and  to  make 
the  politicians  toe  our  line,  instead  of  toeing  theirs,  is 
for  the  people  to  blurt  out  the  truth,  write  a  book,  get 
in  early  beforehand  their  quiet  word  with  both  great 
parties  and  tell  them  whatever  his  name  is,  whatever  his 
party  is,  the  kind  of  President  they  want. 

So  here  it  is,  such  as  it  is,  the  book,  a  little  politically 
innocent-looking  thing  perhaps,  just  engaged  in  being 
like  folks  instead  of  like  politicians,  just  engaged  in  be- 
ing human — in  letting  a  nation  speak  and  act  as  a  human 


INTRODUCTION  .      xvii 

being  speaks  and  acts,  in  a  great  simple  sublime  human 
crisis  in  which  with  forty  nations  looking  on,  we  are 
making  democracy  work — making  a  loophole  for  the  fate 
of  the  world. 


I  am  trying  to  answer  three  questions. 

"What  shall  the  new  President  believe  about  the  people 
and  expect  of  the  people? 

What  shall  the  new  people — people  made  new  by  this 
war,  expect  of  themselves  and  expect  of  their  new 
President  ? 

What  kind  of  a  President,  with  what  kind  of  a  per- 
sonality or  temperament  do  the  people  feel  would  be 
the  best  kind  of  a  President  to  pull  them  together,  to 
help  the  people  do  what  the  people  have  to  do? 

I  have  wanted  to  bring  forward  a  way  in  which  the 
things  the  new  President  will  expect  the  people  to  do, 
can  be  done  by  the  people. 

What  the  people  want  done,  especially  with  regard  to 
the  Red  Flag,  predatory  capital,  predatory  labor,  and 
the  fifty-cent  dollar  cannot  be  done  by  the  President  for 
them,  and  they  are  not  going  to  do  it  themselves  lone- 
somely  and  individually  by  yearning,  or  by  standing 
around  three  thousand  miles  apart  or  in  any  other  way 
than  by  voluntarily  agreeing  to  get  together  and  do  it 
together. 


BOOK  I 

WHAT  THE  PEOPLE  EXPECT  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


GIST 


THE  Crowd  is  my  Hero. 
The   Hero   of   this  book  is   a   hundred  million 
people. 

I  have  come  to  have  the  feeling — especially  in  regard 
to  political  conventions,  that  it  might  not  be  amiss  to 
put  forward  some  suggestions  just  now  as  to  how  a  hun- 
dred million  people  can  strike — make  themselves  more 
substantial,  more  important  in  this  country,  so  that  we 
shall  really  have  in  this  country  in  time  a  hundred  mil- 
lion people  who,  taken  as  a  whole,  feel  important  in  it — 
like  a  Senator  for  instance — like  Senator  Lodge,  like 
sugar  even,  or  like  meat  or  like  oil,  like  Trusts  that 
won 't  trust,  and  Congressmen  that  won 't  play  and  work- 
men that  won't  work — I  am  thinking  out  ways  in  this 
book  in  which  the  hundred  million  people  can  come  to 
feel  as  if  it  made  a  very  substantial  difference  to  some- 
body what  they  wanted  and  what  they  thought — ways  in 
which  the  hundred  million  people  shall  be  taken  seriously 
in  their  own  country,  and  like  a  Profiteer,  or  like  a 
noble  agitator,  or  like  a  free  beautiful  labor  union, — 
get  what  they  want. 


II 

THE  LONESOMEST  JOB  ON  EARTH 

WHAT  is  going  to  happen  to  the  next  President  the 
day  after  he  is  inaugurated,  a  few  minutes  after 
it,  when  he  goes  to  the  place  assigned  to  him,  or  at  least 
that  night? 

The  Ghost  in  the  White  House. 

The  White  House  is  haunted  by  a  vague,  helpless  ab- 
straction, a  kind  of  ghost  of  a  nation,  called  the  people. 

The  only  way  the  Nation,  in  the  White  House,  gets  in, 
is  as  a  spirit.  The  man  who  lives  there,  if  he  wants  to 
be  chummy  (as  any  man  we  want  there  would),  has  to 
commune  with  a  Generalization. 

What  we  really  do  with  a  President  is  to  pick  him 
deliberately  up  out  of  his  warm  human  living  with  the 
rest  of  us,  with  people  who,  whatever  else  is  the  matter 
with  them,  are  at  least  somebody  in  particular,  lift  him 
over  in  the  White  House,  shut  him  up  there  for  four 
years  to  live  in  wedlock  with  An  Average,  to  be  the 
consort  day  and  night  of  Her  Who  Never  Was,  and 
Who  Never  Is — a  kind  of  vague,  cold,  intellectual,  un- 
substantial, lonely,  Terrible  Angel  called  the  People. 

Just  a  kind  of  light  in  Her  eyes  at  times. 

That  is  all  there  is  to  Her. 

It  is  a  good  deal  like  reducing  or  trying  to  reduce  the 
Aurora  Borealis  to  2  and  2  =  4,  to  go  into  the  White 
House  for  four  years,  warm  up  to  this  cold,  passion- 

4 


THE  LONESOMEST  JOB  ON  EARTH  5 

ately  talked  about,  passionately  believed  in  Lady.  It 
does  not  give  any  real  satisfaction  to  anybody — either 
to  the  hundred  million  people  or  to  the  President. 

It  certainly  is  not  a  pleasant  or  thoughtful  thing  for 
a  hundred  million  people  to  do  to  a  President — to  be  a 
Ghost. 

It  is  not  efficient. 

Naturally — much  of  the  time  anyway,  all  the  Ghost  of 
a  people  can  get  or  hope  to  get  (however  hard  he  tries) 
is  the  Ghost  of  a  President. 


Ill 

THE  PRESIDENT  AND  THE  GHOST 

THERE  are  a  number  of  things  about  going  into  the 
White  House  the  next  four  years  and  being  the 
Head  Employee  of  a  hundred  million  people,  that  are 
going  to  make  it,  unless  people  do  something  about  it, 
the  lonesomest  job  on  earth. 

The  new  President  on  entering  the  mansion  and  tak- 
ing up  his  position  as  the  Head  Employee  of  the  hun- 
dred million  people  is  going  to  find  he  is  expected  to  put 
up,  and  put  up  every  day,  with  marked  and  embarrass- 
ing idiosyncrasies  or  personal  traits  in  his  Employer, 
that  no  man  would  ever  put  up  with,  from  any  other 
employer  in  the  world. 

Absentmindedness. 

Non-committalness. 

Halfness,  or  double  personality. 

Bodilessness. 

Big,  impressive-looking  Fool  Moments. 

Cumulus  clouds  of  Slow  Sure  Conceit  with  Sudden 
Flops  of  Humility. 

General  Irresponsibleness. 

And  perhaps  most  trying  of  all  in  being  the  employee 
of  a  hundred  million  people,  is  the  almost  daily  sense 
that  the  employee  has  that  the  Employer — like  some 
strange,  kindly,  big  Innocent,  is  going  to  be  made  a  fool 
of  before  one's  eyes  and  do  things  and  be  made  to  do 

6 


things  by  unworthy  and  designing  persons  for  which 
he  is  going  to  be  sorry. 

The  man  who  is  conscientious  in  the  "White  House  has 
an  Employer  whose  immediate  and  temporary  orders  he 
must  disobey  to  his  face,  sometimes  in  the  hope  that  he 
will  be  thanked  afterwards. 

Once  in  a  great  while  the  man  who  has  been  put  on  the 
job  as  the  expert,  as  the  captain  of  the  ship,  has  to  tell 
the  Owner  of  the  Line,  when  the  storm  is  highest,  that 
he  must  not  butt  in. 

The  restful  and  homelike  feeling  one  has  with  the 
average  employer  that  one  is  just  being  an  employee  and 
that  one's  employer  is  being  responsible,  is  lacking  in 
the  "White  House,  where  one  is  practically  expected  to 
undertake  at  the  same  time  being  both  one's  own  em- 
ployee and  one's  own  employer. 

But  while  this  little  trait  of  general  irresponsibleness 
in  the  President 's  Employer  may  be  the  hardest  to  bear, 
there  are  more  dangerous  ones  for  the  country. 

I  am  dwelling  on  them  long  enough  to  consider  what 
can  be  done  about  them.  I  have  believed  they  are  going 
to  be  removed  or  mitigated  the  moment  the  Employer 
can  be  got  to  see  how  hard  some  of  the  traits  are  making 
it  for  the  President  to  do  anything  for  him. 

Bodilessness  is  the  worst.  The  man  to  whom  the  hun- 
dred million  people  are  giving  for  the  next  four  years 
the  job  of  being  their  Head  Employee,  is  not  only  never 
going  to  see  his  Employer,  but  he  has  an  Employer  so 
large,  so  various,  so  amorphous,  so  mixed  together  and 
so  scattered  apart  he  could  never  hope  in  a  thousand 
years  to  get  in  touch  with  It. 

Serving  It  is  necessarily  one  long  monstrous  strain  of 
guesswork,  a  trying  daily,  nightly,  for  four  years  to  get 


8          THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

into  grip  with  a  mist,  with  a  fog  of  human  nature,  an 
Abstraction,  a  ghost  of  a  nation  called  the  People. 

It  is  this  bodilessness  in  the  Employer — this  very 
simple  rudimentary  whiffling  communion  the  Employer 
has  with  his  usually  distinguished  and  accomplished 
Head  Employee,  which  the  Head  Employee  finds  it 
hardest  to  bear.  The  only  thing  his  Employer  ever  says 
to  him  directly  is  (once  in  four  years)  that  he  wants 
him  or  that  he  does  not  want  him  and  even  then  he  con- 
fides to  him  that  he  only  half  wants  him.  He  says 
deliberately  and  out  loud  before  everybody,  so  that 
everybody  knows  and  the  people  of  other  nations,  "Here 
is  the  man  I  would  a  little  rather  have  than  not. ' '  That 
is  all.  Then  he  coops  him  up  in  the  White  House,  drops 
away  absently,  softly  into  ten  thousand  cities,  forgets 
him,  and  sets  him  to  work. 

Any  man  can  see  for  himself,  that  having  a  crowd 
for  an  Employer  like  this,  a  crowd  of  a  hundred  million 
people  you  cannot  go  to  and  that  cannot  come  to  you, 
puts  one  in  a  very  vague,  lonesome  position,  and  when 
one  thinks  that  on  top  of  all  this  about  forty  or  fifty 
millions  of  the  people  one  is  being  The  Head  Employee 
of  (in  the  other  party)  expect  one  to  feel  and  really 
want  one  to  feel  lonesome  with  them,  and  that  at  the 
utmost  all  one  can  do,  or  ever  hope  to  do  is  to  about  half- 
suit  one's  Employer — keep  up  a  fair  working  balance 
with  him  in  one's  favor,  it  will  be  small  wonder  if  the 
man  in  the  White  House  feels  he  has — especially  these 
next  most  trying  four  years,  the  lonesomest  job  on  earth. 

The  Prime  Minister  of  England  has  a  lonesome  job  of 
course,  but  he  is  the  head  of  his  own  party,  has  and 
knows  he  has  all  the  while  his  own  special  crowd,  he  is 
allowed  and  expected,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  snuggle 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  THE  GHOST     9 

up  to.  This  special  and  understood  chumminess  is  not 
allowed  to  our  President.  He  has  to  drub  along  all  day, 
day  in  and  day  out,  sternly,  and  be  President  of  all  of  us. 

It  may  be  true  that  it  has  not  always  looked  like  the 
lonesomest  job  on  earth  and,  of  course,  when  Theodore 
Roosevelt  had  it,  the  job  of  being  President  considerably 
chirked  up,  but  in  the  new  never-can-tell  world  America 
is  trying  to  be  a  great  nation  in  now,  the  next  four  years 
of  our  next  President,  between  not  making  mistakes  with 
a  hundred  unhappy,  senile,  tubercular  railroads  and  two 
hundred  thousand  sick  and  unhappy  factories  at  home, 
and  not  making  mistakes  with  forty  desperate  nations 
abroad,  the  man  we  put  in  the  White  House  next  is 
going  to  have  what  will  be  the  lonesomest  job  this  old 
earth  has  had  on  it,  for  four  thousand  years — except  the 
one  that  began  in  Nazareth — the  one  the  new  President 
is  going  to  have  a  chance  to  help  and  to  move  along  in 
a  way  which  little,  old,  queer,  bent,  eager  St.  Paul  with 
his  prayers  in  Rome  and  his  sermons  in  Athens,  never 
dreamed  of. 

It  does  seem,  somehow,  with  this  next  particular  thing 
our  new  President  and  a  hundred  million  people  and 
forty  nations  are  all  together  going  to  try  to  do,  as  if  it 
were  rather  unpractical  and  inefficient  at  just  this  time 
for  our  President  to  have  a  ghost  for  an  Employer. 

All  any  man  has  to  do  to  see  how  inefficient  this  tends 
to  make  a  President,  is  to  stop  and  think.  If  you  have 
an  employer  who  cannot  collect  himself  and  you  cannot 
collect  him,  if  all  day,  every  day,  all  you  do  before  you 
do  anything  for  him  is  to  guess  on  him  and  make  him 
up — what  is  there — what  deep,  searching  and  conclusive 
and  permanent  action  is  there,  after  all,  the  man  in  The 
White  House  can  take  in  his  employer's  behalf  when 


10        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

his  employer  has  no  physical  means  of  telling  him  what 
he  wants  and  what  he  is  willing  to  do  with  what  he 
gets?  What  can  the  man  in  the  White  House  hope  to 
accomplish  for  a  people  with  whom  it  is  the  constitu- 
tional and  regular  thing  to  be  as  lonely  as  this? 

I  have  wanted  to  consider  what  can  be  done,  and  done 
now  not  to  have  a  lonely  President  the  next  four  years. 

The  first  thing  to  do  is  to  pick  out  in  the  next  conven- 
tions and  the  next  election  a  man  for  the  White  House 
a  great-hearted  direct  and  free  people  will  not  feel  lonely 
with,  and  then  set  to  work  hard  doing  things  that  will 
back  him  up,  that  will  make  him  daily  feel  where  we 
stand,  and  not  let  him  feel  lonely  with  us. 

The  feeling  of  helplessness,  of  bodilessness — the  feel- 
ing the  Public  has  every  day  in  the  White  House  and  in 
the  Senate,  of  being  treated,  and  treated  to  its  own  face 
as  if  it  was  not  there,  is  a  feeling  that  works  as  badly  one 
way  as  it  does  the  other. 

The  President  does  not  want  a  Ghost. 

The  people  do  not  want  to  be  treated  as  a  Ghost. 

The  object  of  this  book  is  to  resent — to  expose  to  every- 
body as  unfair  and  untrue  and  destroy  forever  the  title 
I  have  written  across  the  front  of  it,  ' '  The  Ghost  in  The 
White  House." 

The  object  of  this  book  is  to  take  its  own  title  back, 
to  put  itself  out  of  date,  to  make  people  in  a  generation 
wonder  what  it  means  to  save,  to  try  to  save  a  great  peo- 
ple in  the  greatest,  most  desperate  moment  of  all  time, 
with  forty  nations  thundering  on  our  door  before  the 
whole  world,  from  being  an  inarticulate,  shimmering, 
wavering,  gibbering  Ghost  in  its  own  House. 

There  must  be  things — broad  simple  things  about  Cap- 
ital and  Labor  people  can  do  and  do  every  day  in  this 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  THE  GHOST         11 

country,  that  will  make  a  President  timidly  stop  guess- 
ing what  they  want. 

It  ought  not  to  take  as  it  does  now,  a  genius  for  a 
President  or  a  seer  for  a  President  to  know  what  the 
people  want.  A  man  of  genius — a  seer,  a  man  who  can 
read  the  heart  of  a  nation — especially  in  politics,  comes 
not  only  not  once  in  four  years,  but  four  hundred  years 
and  it  is  highly  unlikely  when  he  does  that  the  Republi- 
can Party,  or  the  Democratic  Party  in  America  will 
know  him  offhand  and  give  people  a  chance  to  have  him 
in  the  White  House. 

The  best  the  people  can  hope  for  in  America  now  is 
to  have  a  body — to  find  some  way  to  express  ourselves 
in  our  daily  workaday  actions  without  saying  a  word — 
express  ourselves  so  plainly  that  without  saying  a  word 
our  President,  our  Politicians — even  the  kind  of  men 
who  seem  to  put  up  naturally  with  having  to  be  in  the 
Senate — the  kind  of  men  who  can  feel  happy  and  in  their 
element  in  a  place  like  Congress  will  see  what  the  Peo- 
ple— the  real  people  in  this  country  are  like. 

I  am  trying  to  put  forward  ways  of  forming  body- 
tissues  for  a  people  so  that  we  the  people  in  America,  at 
last,  in  the  days  that  lie  ahead,  instead  of  being  a  Ghost 
in  our  own  House,  shall  have  things  that  we  can  do,  ma- 
terial, business  things  that  we  can  do,  so  that  we  shall 
be  able  to  prove  to  a  President  what  we  are  like  and 
what  we  want — so  that  each  man  of  us  shall  feel  he  has 
something  tangible  he  can  make  an  impression  on  a 
President  with — something  more  than  a  vague,  faint,  lit- 
tle ballot  to  hurl  (like  an  Autumn  leaf)  at  him,  once  in 
four  years. 


IV 

REAL  FOLKS  AND  THE  GHOST 

WHEN  a  man  speaks  of  The  City  National  Bank  he 
speaks  of  it  as  if  he  meant  something  and  knew 
\vhat  he  meant. 

"When  the  same  man  in  the  same  breath  speaks  of  The 
People,  watch  him  bewhiffle  it. 

When  a  good  hearty  sensible  fellow  human  being  we 
all  know  speaks  of  Business  he  speaks  of  it  in  a  sub- 
stantial tone,  with  some  burr  in  it,  and  when  in  the  same 
half  minute  he  speaks  of  the  Country,  he  drops  in  some 
mysterious  way  into  a  holy  tone  of  unrealness,  into  a 
kind  of  whine  of  The  Invisible. 

Business  talks  bass.     Patriotism  is  an  JEolian  harp. 

During  the  war  this  was  changed.  We  found  our- 
selves every  day  treating  America,  treating  The  Coun- 
try, treating  The  People  as  a  bodily  fact. 

I  would  like  to  see  what  can  be  done  now  in  the  next 
President's  next  four  years,  to  give  America  this  mag- 
nificent sense  of  a  body  in  peace. 

Why  is  it  that  we  have  in  America  a  body  for  Ger- 
mans, and  then  wilt  down  in  a  minute  after  Chateau- 
Thierry  into  bodilessness  for  ourselves,  into  treating  and 
expecting  everybody  else  to  treat  The  People,  the  will, 
the  vision,  the  glory,  the  destiny  of  The  People  as  a  Ghost 
— unholy,  cowardly,  voiceless,  helpless — just  a  light  in 

12 


REAL  FOLKS  AND  THE  GHOST  13 

its  eyes — just  a  vast  national  shimmer  at  a  world,  with- 
out hands  and  without  feet. 

Millions  of  people  every  day  in  this  country  are  very 
particular  to  salute  the  flag,  sing  the  "Star-Spangled 
Banner"  and  ship  Bolshevists,  but  let  them  speak  to  you 
in  conversation,  of  an  industrial  body  like  the  Steel  Trust 
or  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  they  act  as  if  some- 
thing were  there.  Bring  up  the  Body-Politic  and  it's  a 
whiff. 

It  ought  to  be  considered  treason  to  think  or  to  speak 
of  The  Country  in  this  vague,  breathy  way. 

The  next  immediate,  imperative  need  of  America  is  to 
see  what  can  be  done  and  done  in  the  next  President's 
next  four  years  to  make  the  Body-Politic  people  take  the 
Body-Politic  and  what  happens  to  the  Body-Politic  as  if 
it  were  as  substantial  as  a  coal  strike — as  what  happened 
at  Ypres,  Cambrai  and  Chateau-Thierry. 

Otherwise  we  are  a  nation  of  whiners  and  yearners 
and  are  not  what  we  pretend  to  be  at  all,  and  the  only 
logical  thing  the  Germans  and  the  rest  of  the  world 
can  do,  is  to  protect  themselves  from  democracy. 

I  believe  that  the  best  things  the  Old  World  has  said 
about  us  and  hoped  for  us,  to  the  effect  that  we  are  a 
disinterested  nation  and  a  nation  of  idealists,  are  true  to 
the  American  character  and  real. 

But  they  are  not  actual.  "We  are  the  world's  colossal 
tragic  Adolescent.  Forty  nations  are  depending  on  us — 
are  waiting  for  us — in  the  world's  long  desperate  min- 
utes— waiting  for  America  to  grow  up. 

This  nation  has  just  as  much  spirituality,  just  as  much 
patriotism  and  religion  as  it  expresses  bodily  in  its  busi- 
ness in  the  conduct  of  its  daily  producing,  buying  and 
selling,  and  no  more.  Any  big  beautiful  evaporated 


14       THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Body-Politic  we  have  or  try  to  think  we  can  have  aside 
from  this  body — this  actual  working  through  of  our  pa- 
triotism, our  democracy  and  our  patriotism  into  our 
business,  is  weak,  unholy,  unclean  and  threatens  in  its 
one  desperate  and  critical  moment  the  fate  of  a  world. 

All  really  religious  men  and  all  real  patriots  know 
this. 

In  a  democracy  like  ours  a  religion  which  is  not  occu- 
pied all  day  every  day  in  this  year  of  our  Lord  1920  in 
making  democracy  work,  a  religion  that  loafs  off  into  a 
pillar  of  cloud  by  day,  and  of  fire  by  night,  a  religion 
that  cannot  be  used  to  run  steel  mills  so  that  men  won 't 
go  to  hell  in  them  and  to  run  coal  mines  so  that  men 
won't  be  in  hell  already,  is  not  a  religion  at  all.  And  a 
nation  that  sheds  tears  over  three  hundred  thousand  dis- 
abled and  crippled  soldiers,  who  gave  up  their  jobs  and 
sailed  six  thousand  miles  to  die  for  them,  and  that  has 
finally  managed  to  get  new  jobs  for  just  two  hundred 
and  seventeen  of  the  three  hundred  thousand  and  taken 
nineteen  months  to  do  it,  illustrates  what  it  means — in 
just  one  simple  item — for  a  hundred  million  people,  to 
try  to  be  good  without  a  body. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  behalf  of  its  helplessness  with  the 
President  I  am  groping  in  these  pages  for  a  body  for  the 
Public. 

The  reason  that  the  Public  in  dealing  in  its  daily  busi- 
ness with  powerful  persons  of  any  kind — whether  good 
or  bad,  whether  a  President  or  anybody,  is  taken  ad- 
vantage of  and  does  not  get  what  it  wants,  is  that  the 
Public  is  a  Ghost. 

Theoretically  all  powerful  persons,  predatory  Trusts, 
profiteering  labor  unions  and  the  wrong  kind  of  poli- 
ticians always  speak  respectfully  to  the  Public,  but  when 


REAL  FOLKS  AND  THE  GHOST     15 

they  want  something  that  belongs  to  the  Public  they 
find  the  Public  is  an  Abstraction  and  help  themselves. 
They  act  when  with  the  Public,  as  if  the  Public  was  not 
there. 

The  only  way  this  is  ever  going  to  be  stopped  is  for 
us  to  make  a  spontaneous  voluntary  popular  start  in  this 
country  toward  having  a  body  for  people  in  general,  to- 
wards giving  a  hundred  million  people  in  dealing  with 
their  politicians,  their  trusts  and  labor  unions,  less 
bodilessness.  We  propose  to  give  a  hundred  million  peo- 
ple a  face,  a  voice,  a  presence,  a  backbone,  a  grip. 

Then  all  the  people  we  ask  things  of  who  think  we 
can  be  whoofed  away,  will  pay  attention  to  us. 


THE  GHOST  RECEIVES  AN  INVITATION 

BEING  allowed  to  live  a  week  to-day  means  as  much 
as  being  allowed  to  live  a  whole  life  four  years  ago 
or  perhaps  four  years  from  now. 

"We  are  being  allowed  to  live  in  the  splendid  desperate 
moment  of  the  world. 

International  war  ending  to-night. 

To-morrow  morning  a  thousand  civil  wars  breaking 
out  in  a  thousand  nations — between  classes — unless  we 
all  do  our  seeing  and  do  our  living  swiftly  and  do  it  to- 
gether swiftly  to-day. 

"When  one-tenth  of  the  people  of  America  tell  the 
President  of  the  United  States  and  nine-tenths  of  the 
people  that  they  cannot  have  any  coal  unless  they  do 
what  the  one-tenth  say;  when  another  one-tenth  of  the 
people  tell  the  nine-tenths  that  they  cannot  have  any- 
thing to  eat,  and  another  one-tenth  tell  them  that  they 
cannot  have  anything  to  wear  until  the  one-tenth  get 
what  they  want,  just  how  much  more  democratic  Amer- 
ica is  than  Germany  it  is  difficult  to  say;  and  just  why 
anybody  should  suppose  the  emergency  is  over  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  say.  The  idea  of  getting  what  you  want  by  hold- 
up which  has  been  taught  to  labor  by  capital,  is  now 
getting  ready  to  be  used  by  labor  and  capital  both,  and 
by  everybody. 

The  really  great  immediate  universal  emergency  to- 

16 


THE  GHOST  RECEIVES  AN  INVITATION      17 

day  in  America  is  the  holdup.  We  get  rid  of  one  Kaiser 
other  people  have  three  thousand  miles  away,  to  get  in- 
stead five  thousand  Kaisers  we  have  to  live  with  next 
door  here  at  home,  that  we  have  to  ask  things  of  and  say 
' '  please ' '  to  every  time  we  cook,  every  time  we  eat,  every 
time  we  buy  something  to  wear. 

The  emergency  is  not  only  immediate  but  it  is  uni- 
versal, all  the  people  are  concerned  in  meeting  it  all  the 
time.  We  have  said  to  one  another  and  to  everybody  for 
four  years  that  what  we  have  all  been  sacrificing  for 
and  dying  for  these  four  years  is  to  make  the  world  safe 
for  democracy. 

This  was  our  emergency.  "We  were  right.  The  emer- 
gency we  are  meeting  now  is  to  make  democracy  safe  for 
the  world.  If  the  Kaiser  wanted  to  dream  his  wildest 
dream  of  autocratic  sneer  and  autocratic  hate  he  would 
have  dreamed  US ;  he  would  have  dreamed  what  we  will 
be  unless  the  men  and  women  of  America — especially  the 
men  and  women  of  America  formerly  active  -in  the  Red 
Cross,  shall  meet  the  emergency  and  undertake  in  be- 
half of  the  people  to  prove  to  the  people  how  (if  anybody 
will  go  about  and  look  it  up)  industrial  democracy  in 
America  in  distinction  from  industrial  autocracy,  really 
works. 

If  it  works  for  some  of  us  in  some  places,  let  twenty 
million  people — Red  Cross  people  get  up  and  say  across 
this  land  in  every  village,  town  and  city,  it  shall  work 
now  in  all  places  for  all  of  us.  And  then  take  steps — 
all  of  them  every  morning,  every  afternoon,  getting  to- 
gether as  they  did  in  the  Red  Cross,  to  see  to  it  that  the 
whole  town  and  everybody  in  it  does  something  about  it. 

"When  the  soldiers  of  the  American  army  we  were  all 
helping  in  the  Red  Cross  stop  fighting  the  Germans,  come 


18        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

home,  divide  off  into  classes  and  begin  fighting  one  an- 
other, why — because  now  tjie  soldiers  we  have  been  help- 
ing need  us  more,  because  now  all  day  every  day  they 
need  us  more  than  they  ever  dreamed  of  needing  us  when 
they  were  merely  fighting  Germans — why  should  we  stop 
helping  them  ? 

On  the  day  after  the  armistice — the  very  day  when 
our  war  with  just  Germans  was  over,  when  the  deeper, 
realer,  more  intimate,  more  desperate  war  Germany  had 
precipitated  upon  all  nations  with  themselves,  begins, 
why  should  the  men  and  women  who  had  been  working 
every  afternoon  for  the  men  of  this  nation,  in  the  Red 
Cross,  talk  about  reducing  to  a  peace  basis  * 

The  people  in  the  Red  Cross  have  been  having  in  the 
last  three  years  the  vision  of  backing  up  an  army  of 
four  million  men  fighting  for  the  liberties  of  the  world, 
but  the  vision  that  is  before  us  now — before  the  same 
people — that  we  must  meet  and  meet  desperately  and 
quickly  is  the  vision  of  backing  up  an  army  of  a  hundred 
million  men,  women  and  children  fighting  for  their  own 
liberties  in  their  own  dooryards,  fighting  for  the  liberty 
to  eat  at  their  own  tables,  to  sleep  in  their  own  beds,  and 
to  wear  clothes  on  their  backs,  in  a  country  which  we 
have  told  the  Germans  is  the  greatest  machinery  of  free- 
dom, the  greatest  engine  of  democracy  in  the  world. 

I  will  not  believe  that  the  men  and  women  of  all 
classes  who  have  made  the  Red  Cross  what  it  was,  who 
have  made  the  Red  Cross  the  trusted  representative  of 
American  democracy  in  all  nations,  who  now  find  them- 
selves facing  both  at  home  and  abroad  the  most  desper- 
ate, sublime,  most  stupendous  chance  to  save  democracy 
and  to  present  democracy  to  a  world,  I  will  not  believe 
that  these  men  and  women  are  going  to  lose  their  grip, 


THE  GHOST  RECEIVES  AN  INVITATION      19 

wave  their  vision  for  a  people  away,  forsake  forty  na- 
tions, forsake  the  daily  heaped-up  bewildered  fighting  of 
the  fighters  they  have  helped  before. 

The  logical  thing  at  this  great  moment  for  the  people 
who  made  the  Red  Cross  to  do — the  thing  they  alone 
have  the  record,  the  teamwork-drill,  the  experience,  the 
machinery,  the  momentum  to  do,  is  to  keep  on  following 
the  fighters,  rendering  first  aid  to  the  fighters  moving  on 
with  their  first-aid  from  fighters  for  the  rights  of  the 
people  not  to  be  bullied  by  kings,  to  fighters  for  the 
rights  of  all  classes  of  people  not  to  be  bullied  by  every- 
body, not  to  be  bullied  by  one  another. 


VI 

WHAT  A  BODY  FOR  THE   GHOST  WOULD  BE  LIKE 

HAVE  always  wanted  to  write  a  book  an  employer 
•*•  and  a  workman  could  read  looking  over  each  other 's 
shoulders.  I  would  have  two  chapters  on  every  subject. 
Tn  one  chapter  I  would  tell  the  employer  things  his 
workman  wants  him  to  know,  and  in  the  next  chapter 
I  would  tell  the  workman  things  that  for  years  the  em- 
ployer has  been  trying  to  get  him  to  notice.  I  would 
begin  each  chapter  in  such  a  way  that  no  employer  or 
workman  would  ever  know  which  was  which,  or  which 
was  his  chapter,  until  he  had  got  in  quite  a  little  way ; 
and  I  would  do  my  best  to  have  everybody  read  each 
other's  chapters  all  through  the  book.  An  employer 
would  be  reading  along  m  his  chapter  as  innocent  as 
you  please,  and  slap  his  leg  and  say,  "THAT'S  IT! 
THAT'S  IT!  It  does  me  good  to  think  my  workmen 
are  reading  this!"  And  then  he  would  turn  over  the 
leaf  and  he  would  come  plump  full  head  on  into  three 
paragraphs  about  himself  and  about  how  the  public  feels 
about  him,  and  about  how  his  workmen  feel  about  him, 
and  about  what  God  is  going  to  do  to  him,  and  about 
what  all  the  people  who  read  my  book  are  going  to  help 
God  to  do  to  him,  that  will  make  him  think.  The  first 
thing  he  will  think  of  perhaps  will  be  to  lay  down  the 
book.  Then  before  he  knows  it  he  will  see  another  of 
those  things  he  wants  his  workmen  to  read  softly  poking 

20 


WHAT  A  BODY  WOULD  BE  LIKE  21 

itself  out  of  the  page  at  him.  Then  he  will  slap  his  leg 
and  think  how  I  am  making  his  workmen  think.  So  he 
will  go  through  the  book  slapping  his  leg  and  shouting 
"Amen"  in  one  chapter,  and  sitting  still  and  thinking 
in  the  next. 

This  is  the  gist  of  what  I  propose  a  new  organization 
shall  do  on  a  national  scale. 

It  may  seem  a  rather  simple-minded  way  to  describe 
what  I  propose  a  great  aggregation  of  American  men 
and  women  on  the  scale  of  the  Red  Cross,  should  do,  but 
the  soul,  the  spirit,  the  temperament,  even  the  technique 
of  what  I  have  in  mind — in  miniature,  is  in  it. 

It  is  true  that  it  would  be  a  certain  satisfaction  of 
course  to  an  author  to  prove  to  employers  and  em- 
ployees that  they  could  get  on  better  together  than  they 
could  apart,  even  if  they  got  on  together  better  only 
in  a  kind  of  secret  and  private  way  in  the  pages  of  his 
own  book;  and  it  is  true  that  a  book  in  whicL  I  could 
make  an  employer  and  an  employee  work  their  minds 
together  through  my  own  little  fountain  pen  would  count 
some.  I  would  at  least  be  dramatizing  my  idea  in  ink. 

But  people  do  not  believe  ideas  dramatized  in  ink. 

The  thing  for  an  author  or  a  man  who  has  ideas  to 
do  if  he  must  use  words,  is  to  use  words  to  make  his  ideas 
happen. 

Then  let  him  use  words  about  them  and  write  books 
about  them  to  advertise  that  they  have  happened. 

People  are  more  impressed  with  things  that  have  hap- 
pened than  they  are  with  things  that  are  perhaps  going 
to.  Instead  of  having  employers  and  employees  go  over 
the  same  ideas  together  in  a  book,  I  propose  that  twenty 
million  people,  in  ten  thousand  cities  shall  make  them 
go  over  the  same  ideas  together  in  the  shop. 


22        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Are  capital  and  labor  going  to  use  the  holdup  on  each 
other  to  get  what  they  want  when  six  million  dead  men, 
still  almost  warm  in  their  graves,  have  died  to  prove 
that  the  holdup,  or  German  way  of  getting  things,  does 
not  work?  What  the  new  League  will  be  for  will  be  to 
put  before  the  world,  before  every  nation,  before  every 
village  and  city  in  its  local  branch,  a  working  vision  of 
how  different  classes  and  different  groups  of  people  can 
get  what  they  want  out  of  each  other  by  trying  things 
out  together,  by  touching  each  other's  imaginations  and 
advertising  to  each  other  instead  of  blowing  out  each 
other's  brains.  The  way  to  keep  in  place  our  Bolshe- 
vists of  America  is  to  show  them  that  we  the  combined 
people  of  America,  combined  and  acting  together  as  one 
in  the  organization  I  am  sketching  in  this  book,  know 
what  they  want,  and  that  we  can  get  the  thing  they 
essentially  want  for  them  better  than  they  can  get  it. 
The  three  great  groups  in  American  life — the  employing 
class,  the  laboring  class,  and  the  consumer — have  all  be- 
longed to  the  Red  Cross  together,  they  have  all  worked 
together  and  sacrificed  themselves,  and  sacrificed  their 
class,  to  work  for  the  Red  Cross.  What  the  New  League 
will  stand  for  in  the  name  of  all  of  them  will  be  the 
thing  that  they  have  already  demonstrated  in  the  Red 
Cross  that  they  can  do.  Three  classes  can  get  a  thing  for 
one  class  better  than  one  class  can  get  it. 

This  is  the  content  of  the  League 's  vision  of  action. 

The  method  of  it  will  be  advertising  with  enormous 
campaigns  never  dreamed  of  before  what  the  three-class 
vision  is  and  how  it  works.  Then  we  will  have  factories 
dramatize  it.  Then  we  will  advertise  the  factories. 

Then  when  we  have  democracy  working  in  a  thousand 


WHAT  A  BODY  WOULD  BE  LIKE  23 

factories,  we  will  advertise  and  transplant  our  working 
democracy,  our  factory  democracies,  abroad. 

People  who  have  learned  that  democracy  works  in 
their  daily  work  can  be  trusted  to  believe  democracy 
will  work  even  in  their  religion,  even  in  their  politics. 


The  idea  I  have  in  mind  is  already  foreshadowed  in 
the  city  of  Cleveland. 

The  spirit  of  the  people  of  Cleveland  has  already  re- 
belled against  being  treated  as  a  ghost — against  being 
whoofed  at  by  Labor  unions  and  trusts. 

Always  before  this,  when  incompetent  manufacturers 
and  incompetent  labor  unions,  for  the  mere  reason  that 
they  had  not  the  patience  to  try  very  hard  and  were  in- 
competent to  understand  one  another  and  do  their  job, 
held  up  the  whole  city — five  hundred  thousand  people — 
and  calmly  made  them  pay  for  it,  the  city  of  Cleveland 
like  any  other  city  would  venture  to  step  in  sweetly  and 
kindly,  look  spiritual  and  intangible  a  minute,  suggest 
wistfully  that  they  did  feel  capital  and  labor  were  not 
being  quite  fair  to  Cleveland  and  would  they  not  please 
stop  interrupting  Cleveland  several  million  dollars  a 
day.  All  that  ever  would  come  of  it  would  be  the  yowls 
of  Labor  at  the  Ghost  of  Cleveland,  the  noble  whines  of 
manufacturers  at  the  Ghost  of  Cleveland. 

Cleveland  was  treated  as  if  it  was  not  there. 

Cleveland  now  swears  off  from  being  a  ghost  and  pro- 
poses to  deal  bodily  and  in  behalf  of  all,  with  its  own 
lockouts  and  its  own  strikes  in  much  the  same  way  I  am 
hoping  the  nation  will,  according  to  the  news  in  my 
paper  this  morning. 

With  Mr.  Paul  Pfeiss,  an  eminently  competent  manu- 


24       THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

facturer,  recognizing  the  incompetence  of  his  own  group 
as  partly  responsible  for  the  holdups  practiced  on  the 
city  and  with  Mr.  Warren  S.  Stone,  an  eminently  com- 
petent labor  union  leader,  recognizing  the  incompetence 
of  his  own  group  as  being  also  partly  responsible — with 
these  two  men,  one  the  official  representative  of  the  Capi- 
tal group,  and  the  other  the  official  representative  of  the 
Labor  group,  both  championing  the  Public  group  and 
standing  out  for  Cleveland  against  themselves,  taking 
the  initiative  and  acting  respectively  as  President  and 
Secretary  of  the  Public  group,  the  Ghost  of  the  city  of 
Cleveland  publicly  swears  off  from  being  a  ghost  and 
begins  precipitating  a  body  for  itself. 

I  do  not  wish  to  hamper  my  own  statement  of  my  idea 
of  a  body  for  the  people  of  the  United  States  by  linking 
it  up  with  a  definite  undertaking  in  Cleveland  which 
may  or  may  not  prove  to  be  as  good  an  illustration  of  it 
as  I  hope,  but  the  spirit  and  the  understanding  of  what 
has  got  to  happen,  seems  to  be  in  Cleveland — and  I  stop 
in  the  middle  of  my  chapter  with  greetings  to  Paul  Pfeiss 
and  to  Warren  Stone.  In  my  book  the  Ghost  of  the  Peo- 
ple of  Cleveland  salutes  the  Ghost  of  the  People  of  the 
United  States! 


VII 

THE  GHOST  GETS  DOWN  TO  BUSINESS 

A  BODY  usually  begins  with  an  embryo,  and  the 
tissue  and  skeleton  come  afterwards. 

A  book  does,  too.  I  prefer  not  exposing  a  skeleton 
much,  myself,  and  am  inclined  to  feel  that  the  ground 
plan  of  a  book  like  the  ground  plan  of  a  man,  should 
be  illustrated  and  used,  should  be  presented  to  people 
with  the  flesh  on,  that  a  skeleton  should  be  treated  po- 
litely as  an  inference. 

But  I  am  dealing  with  the  body  of  democracy.  And 
people  are  nervous  about  democracy  just  now,  so  much 
boneless  democracy  is  being  offered  to  them. 

So  I  begin  with  the  principles — the  skeleton  of  the 
body  of  democracy  for  which  this  book  stands. 

The  outstanding  features  of  the  body  of  democracy 
arc  the  brain,  the  heart  and  the  hand. 

"With  the  brain  of  democracy  goes  the  right  to  think. 

"With  the  heart  goes  the  right  to  live. 

"With  the  hand  goes  the  right  to  be  waited  on. 

"With  these  three  rights  go  three  greater  rights,  or 
three  duties,  some  people  call  them. 

"With  the  right  to  think  goes  the  right  to  let  others 
think. 

"With  the  right  to  live  goes  the  right  to  let  others  live. 

"With  the  right  to  be  waited  on,  goes  the  right  to  serve. 
To  call  the  right  to  serve  a  duty,  is  an  understatement. 

25 


26        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

I  doubt  if  the  people  who  have  succeeded  best  and  who 
have  really  attained  the  largest  amount  of  their  three 
greater  rights,  have  thought  of  them  very  often  as  duties. 

I  end  this  chapter  with  the  three  questions  America 
is  in  the  world  to-day  to  ask,  to  find  out  her  own  personal 
three  answers  to  in  the  sight  of  the  nations. 

I  am  putting  with  the  three  questions  the  three  an- 
swers I  am  hoping  to  hear  my  country  give,  before  I  die. 

What  determines  what  proportion  of  his  right  to  think, 
each  man  shall  have  ? 

His  power  to  get  attention  and  let  others  think. 

What  determines  what  proportion  of  his  right  to  live, 
each  man  shall  have  ? 

His  power  to  let  others  live. 

What  determines  what  proportion  of  his  right  to  be 
waited  on,  each  man  shall  have  ? 

His  power  to  serve. 

These  are  the  principles  of  the  new  League — the  vol- 
untary, spontaneous  organization  of  the  men  and  women 
of  America  to  meet  the  emergency  in  America  of  our 
war  with  ourselves,  on  the  same  scale  and  in  the  same 
spirit  as  the  Eed  Cross  met  the  emergency  of  our  war 
with  other  nations,  an  organization  which  I  hope  to  show 
ought  to  be  formed,  and  which  I  am  rising  to  make  the 
motion  to  form,  in  this  book. 

I  put  these  principles  forward  as  the  by-laws  of  Amer- 
ica's  faith  in  itself,  as  the  principles  that  should  govern 
the  brain,  the  heart  and  the  hand  of  each  man  in  a 
democracy,  toward  all  other  men  and  that  should  govern 
all  other  men  toward  him — the  skeleton  of  the  body  of 
the  people. 


I 


VIII 

THREE  RIGHTS  OF   MAN  IN  A  DEMOCRACY 
I — THE  RIGHT   TO  THINK 

AM  entitled  to  one  one-hundred  millionth  of  Presi- 
dent "Wilson's  time  in  a  year. 

th. 


100,000,000 

2 

If  I  want ths  of  President  Wilson 's  time  in 

100,000,000 

a  year  I  must  show  him  why.  I  must  also  show  the  other 
99,999,999  people  who  think  I  deserve  no  more  than  my 

1 

regular  th  why  I  should  have  two.    Not  al- 

100,000,000 

lowing  for  the  President's  sleeping  nights,  my  precise 
share  of  his  time  would  be  one-third  of  a  second  once  a 
year.  Why  should  I  have  two-thirds  of  a  second! 

I  have  to  show. 

The  success  of  democracy  as  a  working  institution 
turns  on  salesmanship — upon  every  man's  selling  him- 
self— his  right  to  the  attention  of  the  Government. 

A  democracy  which  considers  itself  a  queue  of  a  hun- 
dred million  people  standing  before  the  window  of  the 
President's  attention  to  be  waited  upon  by  the  Presi- 
dent in  the  order  in  which  they  are  born  or  in  which 

27 


28        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

they  come  up,  would  be  a  helpless  institution.  The  suc- 
cess of  democracy — that  is,  the  success  of  a  government 
in  serving  the  will  of  the  hundred  million  people  in  the 
queue,  turns  on  sorting  people  in  the  queue  out,  turns 
on  giving  attention  to  what  some  people  in  the  queue 
want  before  others.  The  man  who  gets  out  of  line  and 
walks  up  ahead  of  people  who  have  been  standing  in  line 
longer  than  he  has,  must  get  the  permission  of  the  queue. 
He  must  make  the  people  in  the  queue  feel  he  represents 
them  with  the  President  if  he  steps  up  ahead.  Then  they 
let  him  have  their  turn.  They  are  glad  to  let  him  have 
hours  with  the  President  if  they  feel  he  is  giving  hours' 
worth  of  representation  to  their  minutes.  All  each  man 
wants  to  feel  is  that  in  letting  Gompers,  for  instance,  or 
Schwab,  go  up  ahead,  he  is  getting  with  the  President 
a  minute  an  hour  long.  Miles  of  people  in  rows  say  to 
a  man  like  this,  who  can  give  them  and  their  interests 
with  the  President  a  minute  an  hour  long,  "You  first, 
please. ' ' 

Political  democracy,  if  it  works,  turns  on  getting  the 
attention  of  the  queue  and  then  going  with  it  to  the 
window. 

Political  democracy,  in  other  words,  turns  on  ad- 
vertising. 

So  does  industrial  democracy. 

Industrial  democracy  in  a  factory  of  five  thousand 
men  consists  in  making  arrangements  for  the  five  thou- 
sand men  to  appreciate  each  other,  appreciate  the  Firm, 
and  to  feel  the  Firm  appreciating  them;  arrangements 
for  having  the  five  thousand  men  get  each  other 's  atten- 
tion in  the  right  proportions  at  the  right  time  so  that 
they  work  as  one. 

The  next  thing  that  is  coming  in  industrial  democracy 


THREE  RIGHTS  OF  MAN  IN  A  DEMOCRACY    29 

is  getting  skilled  capital  and  skilled  labor  to  appreciate 
each  other's  skill.  A  skilled  capitalist  can  not  fairly  be 
called  a  skilled  capitalist  or,  now  that  this  war  is  over, 
unless  he  knows  how  to  keep  his  queue  appreciating  his 
skill,  keep  his  five  thousand  men  standing  in  line  for 
his  attention  cheerfully. 

The  difference  between  an  industrial  autocracy  and  au 
industrial  democracy  is  that  in  an  industrial  autocracy 
you  keep  your  queue  in  line  with  a  club,  or  with  threats 
of  bread  and  butter,  and  in  an  industrial  democracy 
you  have  your  queue  of  five  thousand  men,  each  man 
in  the  row  cheering  you  while  he  sees  you  giving  one 
minute  a  week  of  your  attention  to  him  and  one  hour  a 
day  of  your  attention  to  others.  Still  you  find  him 
cheering  you. 

The  skilled  employer  is  the  employer  who  so  success- 
fully advertises  his  skill  to  his  employees  and  so  success- 
fully advertises  their  skill  to  themselves  and  to  one  an- 
othjer  that  they  hand  over  to  him  in  their  common  in- 
terest the  right  to  sort  them  over.  They  hand  over  to 
him  deliberately,  in  other  words,  in  their  own  interests, 
the  right  not  to  treat  them  alike.  Democracy  consists 
in  keeping  people  in  line  without  a  club.  Democracy  is 
a  queueful  of  people  cutting  in  ahead  of  one  another 
fairly  and  in  a  way  that  the  queue  stands  for. 

If  a  man  standing  in  a  queue  before  a  ticket  window 
wants  to  cut  in  ahead  of  five  people,  the  way  for  him 
to  do  it  is  to  show  the  five  people  something  in  his  hand 
that  makes  them  say,  "You  first,  please."  He  must 
show  why  he  should  go  first,  and  that  he  is  doing  it  in 
their  interest. 

The  other  day  as  I  was  standing  in  a  long  line  of 
people  before  the  ticket  window  in  the  Northampton  sta- 


30        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

tion,  I  noticed  on  a  guess  that  half  a  dozen  of  the  people 
were  standing  in  line  to  buy  a  ticket  to  New  York  on 
the  express  due  in  half  an  hour,  and  a  dozen  and  a  half 
were  standing  in  line  to  buy  tickets  to  Springfield  on 
the  local  going  in  three  minutes.  I  was  number  thirteen. 
I  wanted  to  get  a  ticket  for  Springfield.  The  thing  for 
me  to  do,  of  course,  to  rise  to  the  crisis  and  make  democ- 
racy work,  was  to  jump  up  on  my  suitcase  and  address 
the  queue  who  were  ahead  of  me :  "  Ladies  and  gentle- 
men! Eighteen  or  twenty  of  you  in  this  line  ahead  of 
me  want  tickets  to  Springfield  on  the  train  going  in 
three  minutes,  and  the  rest  of  you  want  tickets  on  the 
train  going  in  half  an  hour.  If  you  people  who  are 
hoping  you  can  get  your  tickets  in  time  to  go  to  Spring- 
field will  let  me  cut  in  ahead  of  you  out  of  my  turn  and 
get  my  ticket,  I  will  buy  tickets  for  all  of  you  with  this 
ten  dollar  bill  in  thirty  seconds,  and  you  can  get  your 
tickets  of  me  on  the  train,  and  in  this  way  we  will  all 
catch  it." 

I  did  not  do  it,  of  course,  but  it  would  have  been  what 
I  call  democracy  if  I  had. 

The  whole  problem  of  labor  and  capital,  and  of  polit- 
ical and  industrial  freedom,  from  now  on  after  this  war 
would  have  been  solved  in  miniature  before  that  window 
— if  I  had.  My  invention  for  the  future  of  the  Red 
Cross  is  that  it  should  do  what  I  tried  to  do  at  that  win- 
dow, for  the  American  people. 


Democracy  is  a  form  of  government  in  which  the  peo- 
ple are  essentially  autocrats.  The  difference  between  an 
autocracy  and  a  democracy  is  that  the  people  select  their 
autocrats.  The  more  autocracy  the  more  efficiency. 

A  people  can  not  have  the  autocracy  they  need  to  get 


THREE  RIGHTS  OF  MAN  IN  A  DEMOCRACY    31 

what  they  want  unless  they  are  willing  to  give  over  to 
their  representatives  the  necessary  trust  pro  tern.,  the 
necessary  ex  officio  right  to  be  autocrats  in  their  behalf. 
Democracy  is  autocracy  of  the  people,  for  the  people, 
by  the  people — that  is,  by  the  people  in  spirit  to  their 
representatives  who  express  their  spirit. 

The  representatives  of  the  people  can  not  keep  the 
people's  autocracy  for  them  unless  they  keep  in  touch 
with  the  people — that  is,  unless  they  advertise  to  the 
people  and  the  people  feel  that  they  can  advertise  to 
them. 

In  an  autocracy  the  autocracy  of  the  ruler  is  based 
on  forcing  people's  attention.  In  a  democracy  the  au- 
tocracy is  based  on  touching  men's  imaginations,  on 
making  people  want  to  fall  into  line  in  the  right  order. 
If  the  Kaiser  had  done  this  in  Germany,  Germany  would 
have  been  the  greatest  democracy  in  the  world  and  the 
greatest  nation.  If  the  Kaiser  had  had  the  power  and 
genius  for  advertising  of  the  modern  kind,  if  he  had  had 
the  power  of  making  people  want  things  in  distinction 
from  making  them  meek  and  making  them  take  them 
whether  they  wanted  them  or  not,  he  would  have  in- 
vented and  set  up  a  working  model  for  America. 

Obviously,  the  more  the  people  desire  to  form  in  line 
the  better  and  more  successful  all  the  people  in  the  line 
will  be  in  getting  what  they  want  at  the  window.  The 
more  autocracy  people  know  enough  to  give  their  rep- 
resentatives, the  better  democracy  works.  In  the  last 
analysis  the  fate  of  democracy  in  modern  life  turns  on 
having  autocrats  on  probation — autocrats  selected  for 
their  positions  by  advertising,  and  kept  in  position  as 
autocrats  as  long  as  they  can  advertise  to  the  people  and 
as  long  as  the  people  feel  that  they  can  advertise  to  them. 


IX 

n — THE  EIGHT  TO  BE  WAITED  ON 

DEMOCRACY  is  a  form  of  government  in  which  the 
people  are  supposed  to  be  waited  on  in  the  way 
kings  are,  and  in  which  the  people  arrange  to  have 
things  done  for  them  so  that  they  won't  have  to  hold 
up  their  work  and  take  the  time  off  to  do  them 
themselves. 

THREE  RIGHTS  TO  BE  WAITED  ON 

1.  Skilled  labor  has  the  right  to  be  waited  on  by  skilled 
capital. 

Skilled  labor,  being  preoccupied  as  it  naturally  is  by 
its  highly  specialized  knowledge  and  skill,  can  not  taktf 
the  time  off  to  do  for  itself  what  skilled  capital  could 
do  in  providing  work,  and  providing  markets  for  skilled 
labor.  It  cannot,  on  the  other  hand,  take  the  time  off 
to  understand  skilled  capital  and  what  it  is  doing  in 
detail.  Even  if  it  could  take  the  time  off,  and  if  five 
thousand  hands  in  a  factory  all  devoted  themselves  all 
day  to  understanding  the  work  the  Office  is  doing,  the 
five  thousand  would  make  poor  work  of  understanding. 

Arrangements  have  got  to  be  made  in  one  way  or  an- 
other for  skilled  labor's  trusting  the  Office,  for  its  feel- 
ing that  the  autocracy  it  intrusts  to  the  Office  is  being 
used  fairly  in  its  interest. 

The  first  and  most  important  skill  of  skilled  capital, 

32 


33 

of  course,  is  its  skill  in  doing  for  its  employees  and  for 
its  customers  what  it  is  supposed  to  do. 

But  the  second  skill  of  capital  must  be  skill  in  being 
believed  in  and  finding  means  of  being  believed  in  by  its 
employees.  The  more  it  is  believed  in,  the  more  power  to 
serve  will  be  accorded  to  it.  In  other  words,  the  second 
function  of  skilled  capital  is  advertising  to  its  skilled 
labor,  and  in  making  exchange  arrangements  with  its 
skilled  labor,  for  being  advertised  to. 

2.  Skilled  capital  has  a  right  to  be  waited  on  by  skilled 
labor. 

The  first  skill  of  skilled  labor  must  be  with  its  ma- 
chines and  its  tools,  and  in  making  its  product,  but  the 
second  skill  must  be  its  skill  in  being  believed  in.  The 
skilled  capital  it  is  supposed  to  be  waited  on  by  is  pre- 
occupied with  its  skill,  and  unless  labor  makes  special 
and  very  thorough  provision  to  be  understood  and  to 
keep  understood  by  skilled  capital,  and  by  the  public 
and  the  people  who  buy  the  goods,  and  unless  skilled 
labor  tries  to  keep  in  touch  all  around  and  do  teamwork 
all  around  with  all  concerned  so  that  it  can  do  its  work, 
it  can  not  fairly  be  called  skilled  labor  at  all.  Skilled 
labor  has  to  have  skill  in  putting  its  skill  with  others 
to  produce  a  result. 

In  other  words,  the  second  skill  of  skilled  labor  is  skill 
in  making  arrangements  for  being  believed  in  and  be- 
lieving in  others.  Its  second  skill  is  in  advertising  and 
in  being  advertised  to. 

3.  The  other  group  concerned  in  industry  is  one  which 
I  like  to  call  the  Skilled  Consumers. 

The  people  have  a  right  to  have  capital  skilled  in  con- 
sidering them,  and  labor  skilled  in  considering  them,  at 
every  point. 


34        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

The  people  are  the  employers  of  all  employers  and 
of  all  employees. 

The  saying  among  business  men  and  merchants  in  case 
of  quarrel,  "The  customer  is  always  right,"  has  to  be 
in  the  long  run  treated  in  a  democracy  as  if  it  were 
approximately  true. 

"What  the  consumers  have  to  do  in  a  democracy,  how- 
ever, in  a  singular  degree  is  to  live  up  to  it.  The  con- 
sumers must  make,  and  I  believe  are  going  to  make, 
elaborate  arrangements  for  being  skilled  consumers. 

Skilled  capital  has  organized. 

Skilled  labor  has  organized. 

And  now  the  consumers,  or  the  people,  if  they  are  to 
be  skilled,  and  if  they  are  to  get  out  of  skilled  capital 
and  skilled  labor  what  they  want,  will  organize  their 
skill  to  get  it.  They  will  organize  to  help  the  best  skilled 
capital  at  the  expense  of  the  worst,  to  help  the  best 
skilled  labor  at  the  expense  of  the  worst. 

In  other  words,  the  secret  of  industrial  democracy  and 
of  making  industrial  democracy  work,  lies  in  making  the 
people  skilled  in  conveying  their  wishes  to  the  skilled 
capital  and  skilled  labor  waiting  on  them. 

Skilled  capital  has  a  right  to  be  waited  on  by  skilled 
consumers,  who  will  support  it  when  it  is  right  and 
punish  it  when  it  is  wrong,  by  the  way  they  buy  and 
sell. 

Skilled  labor  has  a  right  to  be  waited  on  by  skilled 
consumers,  who  will  defend  it  from  skilled  capital  that 
pretends  to  be  skilled  and  is  not. 

True  and  sincere  skilled  capital  and  true  and  sincere 
skilled  labor  cannot  keep  on  doing  what  they  try  to 
do  as  long  as  the  supposedly  skilled  consumers  they  have 
a  right  to,  back  away  from  their  job  and  lazily  and  fool- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  BE  WAITED  ON  35 

ishly  buy  and  sell  in  the  markets  in  such  a  way  as  to 
reward  capital  for  doing  wrong  to  labor,  or  labor  for" 
doing  wrong  to  capital. 

In  other  words,  the  second  function  of  the  skilled  con- 
sumers after  telling  skilled  capital  and  labor  what  they 
want  to  eat  and  wear,  is  to  make  arrangements  to  ad- 
vertise to  capital  and  labor  and  to  have  capital  and 
labor  advertise  to  them,  so  that  they  can  be  skilled  in 
knowing  how  to  help  them  work  together,  and  skilled 
in  buying  in  such  a  way  as  to  help  in  making  capital 
and  labor  more  skilled  instead  of  less  in  dealing  with 
themselves  and  one  another  and  with  the  people. 

I  have  summed  up  the  three  Rights  to  Be  Waited  On. 
All  of  these  rights  turn  on  skilled  advertising  and  on  the 
science  of  being  believed  in,  the  science  of  being  allowed 
to  be  autocrats,  the  science  of  being  allowed  by  the  peo- 
ple to  make  their  democracy  work. 

I  would  like  to  illustrate  this  in  the  next  chapter. 


HI — THE  RIGHT  TO  WHISPER 

THE  employees  in  the  stockyards  in have  been 
trying  to  get  the  attention  of  Mr.  John  Doe,  the 
young  man  who  inherited  the  business,  to  the  fact  that 
the  least  a  family  can  live  on  now  is  $1388  a  year. 

Mr.  Doe,  who  has  never  tried  being  bitterly  poor  and 
whose  attention  can  not  be  got  to  what  can  be  done  in  a 
year  for  a  wife  and  five  children  with  $1388  until  he 
tries  it,  is  rather  discouraging  to  deal  with. 

There  is  no  known  way  of  getting  him  to  try  it,  and 
in  the  meantime  he  thinks  he  knows  without  trying,  and 
he  thinks  his  attention  is  got  when  it  is  not.  He  tells  the 
workmen  that  two  pairs  of  shoes  ought  to  last  a  child 
a  year — and  goes  home  in  his  limousine. 

That  is  the  end  of  it. 

It  ought  not  to  be  the  end  of  it. 

Who  can  get  Mr.  Doe's  attention? 

"Why  is  it  that  Mr.  Doe's  employees  do  not  succeed  in 
getting  Mr.  Doe's  attention? 

Why  is  it  that  Mr.  Doe  has  so  little  difficulty  in  getting 
theirs?  Why  is  it  that  Mr.  Doe's  employees,  when  he 
speaks  of  the  two  pairs  of  shoes  a  year,  hang  on  his 
words? 

Because  Mr.  John  Doe  is  their  employer. 

Who  are  the  people  whose  words  Mr.  Doe  would  hang 
on  and  would  be  obliged  to  hang  on  ? 

36 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WHISPER  37 

Mr.  Doe's  employers. 

Who  are  Mr.  Doe 's  employers  ? 

All  the  people  in  America  who  eat  meat. 

Of  course  if  one  had  just  come  from  Mars  yesterday 
and  was  looking  about  studying  things,  the  first  thing 
one  would  ask  would  be,  Why  do  not  the  people  in  Amer- 
ica who  eat  meat,  and  who  keep  on  Mr.  Doe  in  his  posi- 
tion, at  once  mention  to  him  that  they  wish  him  to  look 
into  the  matter  of  the  two  pairs  of  shoes  a  year? 

Because  the  People  Who  Eat  Meat — Mr.  Doe's  em- 
ployers— have  no  way  of  mentioning  it  to  Mr.  Doe. 

If  the  People  Who  Eat  Meat  would  but  barely  whisper 
to  Mr.  Doe  it  would  get  his  attention  as  much  as  a  whole 
year's  shouting  would  from  his  workmen. 

But  the  People  Who  Eat  Meat  in  America  have  no 
whisper.  In  other  words,  it  is  because  Mr.  Doe's  em- 
ployers are  absolutely  dumb,  and  Mr.  Doe  is  absolutely 
deaf  to  any  one  except  his  employers,  that  two  pairs  of 
shoes  are  not  enough  for  the  workmen's  children. 

It  is  for  the  purpose  of  letting  the  People  Who  Eat 
Meat  in  America — whisper  and  learn  to  whisper  in  this 
country  that  the  new  League  organized  to  operate  as  a 
kind  of  People's  Advertising  Guild  or  Consumers'  Ad- 
vertising Club,  with  its  national  office  in  New  York  and 
its  local  branches  in  ten  thousand  towns  and  cities,  now 
offers  its  services  to  all  people  who  eat  meat  in  America. 

The  employers  of  America  have  organized  to  do  any- 
thing with  their  business,  and  anything  with  their  work- 
men, and  anything  with  the  country  that  they  like. 

The  workmen  of  America  have  organized  to  do  now, 
and  are  deliberately  planning  to  do  anything  with  their 
work,  and  anything  with  their  employers,  and  anything 
with  the  country  that  they  like. 


38        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

The  new  national  League  is  now  to  be  organized  as  the 
voice  of  the  American  people,  as  the  whisper  of  the  will 
of  the  consumer  in  every  industry  in  America. 

The  people  to  get  the  attention  of  employers  are  the 
employers  of  the  employers. 

Every  civil  war  we  are  having  in  this  country  can  be 
settled  and  the  attention  of  the  fighters  on  both  sides 
can  be  got,  and  the  country  can  work  as  one  man  in 
making  democracy  safe  for  the  world,  the  moment  the 
employers  of  the  employers  whisper. 


The  way  I  would  like  to  end  this  chapter — with  the 
blanks  filled  in,  of  course,  would  be  this. 

Anybody  who  wants  to  be  a  part^of  this  whisper,  who 
knows  of  any  industry  he  would  like  to  see  a  whisper 
from  the  people  tried  in,  or  who  wishes  as  an  Associate 
Member  to  join  the  Air  Line  League — a  League  for  the 
direct  action  of  the  people  in  what  concerns  them  all, 
is  invited  to  send  five  dollars  as  membership  fee  and  his 
name  and  address,  to ,  Treasurer  Na- 
tional Office  of  The  Air  Line  League,  Number 

Street,  New  York. 

But  the  chapter  cannot  end  in  this  way. 

This  is  merely  the  pattern  of  the  way  I  would  like  to 
have  it  end  later,  and  while  I  have  put  the  name — The 
Air  Line  League — down  and  am  going  to  use  it  for  the 
convenience  of  this  book,  I  only  do  so,  leaving  it  open 
to  the  people  who  have  the  vision  of  The  League  and 
who  put  the  vision  into  action,  to  change  the  name  if 
they  want  to. 


XI 

THE   RIGHT   TO    WHISPER   TOGETHER 

EVERY  man  like  all  Gaul  is  divided  into  three  parts. 
He  is  an  employee  of  somebody,  an  employer  of 
somebody,  and  a  consumer. 

The  natural  employer  left  to  himself  is  apt  to  sup- 
pose, if  he  is  making  shoes,  that  his  consumers  ought  to 
pay  more  for  shoes,  and  that  his  employees  ought  to  be 
paid  less.  As  regards  hats,  and  umbrellas,  and  overcoats, 
and  underwear,  the  same  man  is  a  rather  noble  impar- 
tial person  towards  employers  and  employees.  He  wants 
them  to  listen  to  each  other  and  lower  the  cost  of  living 
by  not  having  strikes  and  lockouts,  and  by  not  fighting 
each  other  ten  hours  a  day. 

In  999  out  of  1000  labor  quarrels  a  consumer  is  natur- 
ally a  fair-minded  person  and  the  best-located  person  to 
control  and  determine  how  any  particular  business  shall 
be  run. 

The  League  proposed  is  planned  to  operate  in  its  na- 
tional and  local  functions  as  a  national  Consumers'  Club, 
with  working  branches  in  every  town  which  shall  be 
engaged  in  doing  specific  things  every  day  toward 
making  the  employers  and  employees  in  that  town  listen. 
fo  each  other  in  the  interests  of  the  consumer  public. 

It  is  always  to  the  interests  of  the  consumer-public  to 
gee  to  it  that  people  who  have  particular  interests  in 

39 


40        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

a  business  should  be  compelled  to  listen  to  the  others' 
interests. 

Consumers  naturally  prefer  experts  to  run  things  for 
them,  but  if  they  do  not  run  them  for  them,  they  are 
the  natural  people  to  make  them  do  it. 

In  the  last  resort  the  right  to  control  is  with  the 
consumers. 

We  are  going  to  look  to  them  very  soon  now  as  the 
natural  Central  Telephone  Exchange  in  business.  It  is 
the  consumers  who  connect  everybody  up.  They  are  the 
switchboard  of  the  World. 


XII 

THE  RIGHT  TO  TRUST  SOMEBODY 

DEMOCRACY — as  perhaps  my  reader  will  have 
heard  me  say  before — democracy  is  a  form  of  gov- 
ernment in  which  the  people  are  supposed  to  be  waited 
on  in  just  the  way  kings  are  and  in  which  the  people 
arrange  to  have  things  done  for  them  so  that  they 
won't  have  to  hold  up  their  work  and  take  the  time  off 
to  do  them  themselves. 

I  try  to  go  to  the  polls  as  I  should.  But  I  resent  being 
obliged  by  my  dear  native  country  to  stand  up  in  a 
booth  by  myself  with  a  lead  pencil  and  know  all  there 
is  to  know  and  in  a  few  minutes,  about  seventy-five  men 
on  a  ticket.  I  do  not  like  to  feel  that  I  am  swaying  the 
world  with  that  yellow  pencil,  and  that  the  ignorant 
way  I  feel  when  I  am  putting  down  crosses  beside  names, 
is  the  feeling  other  people  have,  that  this  feeling  I  have 
— in  those  few  brief  miserable  moments  I  spend  with  the 
yellow  pencil — is  the  feeling  that  this  country  is  being 
governed  with. 

I  met  a  man  the  other  day  as  he  came  out  from  the 
polls  who  asked  me  who  somebody  was  he  had  voted  for, 
and  he  said  he  went  on  the  general  principle  when  he 
was  up  in  one  of  those  stalls  of  ignorance  and  was  being 
stood  up  faithfully  with  nothing  in  his  head  to  rule  the 
country — he  went  on  the  general  principle  that  every 

41 


42        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

time  he  came  on  the  name  of  a  man  he  knew,  he  just 
voted  for  the  other. 

As  a  democrat  and  as  a  believer  in  crowds  I  resent 
the  idea  that  being  stood  up  and  being  made  to  vote  on 
seventy-five  names  I  cannot  know  anything  about  is 
democracy.  It  is  tyranny.  It  is  a  demand  that  I  do 
something  no  one  has  a  right  to  make  me  do.  I  have 
other  things  every  man  knows  I  can  do  better  and  so 
has  the  man  in  the  booth  next  to  me>  than  knowing  all 
there  is  to  know  about  seventy-five  names  on  a  ticket — 
Smiths  and  Browns  and  Smiths  and  Smiths — it  is  a 
thing  I  want  to  have  done  for  me,  I  want  experts — en- 
gineers in  human  nature  that  I  and  my  fellow  citizens 
can  hire  to  pick  out  my  employees,  i.  e.,  the  employees 
of  the  state  that  I  want  and  that  I  have  a  right  to  and 
that  I  would  have  if  I  had  time  to  stop  work,  study  them 
and  find  them.  Very  often  the  way  we  don't  go  to  the 
polls  in  America  is  to  our  credit.  It  is  the  protest  of 
our  intelligence  against  the  impossibility  of  being  in- 
telligent toward  so  many  subjects  and  detectives  toward 
so  many  people. 

We  don't  want  to  stop  doing  things  we  know  we 
know,  and  know  we  can  do,  to  vote  on  expert  questions 
we  don't  even  want  to  know  anything  about,  huge  laun- 
dry-lists of  people  that  God  only  knows  or  could  know 
and  that  can  only  be  seen  through  anyway  by  large 
faithful  hard-working  committees  who  devote  their  time 
to  it. 

If  we  spent  nine  hours  a  day  in  doing  nothing  else 
but  reading  papers  and  watching  and  going  up  and 
down  our  laundry-list  of  valuable  persons  day  and  night 
we  couldn't  keep  track  or  begin  to  keep  track  of  the 
people  we  put  in  office.  It  is  not  our  business  to,  it  seems 


THE  RIGHT  TO  TRUST  SOMEBODY         43 

to  many  of  us.  Perhaps  I  should  merely  speak  for  my- 
self. I  can  at  least  be  permitted  to  say  that  it  is  not  my 
business.  If  the  state  will  give  me  ten  men  to  watch, 
men  in  prominent  places  where  they  can  be  watched 
more  or  less  naturally  and  easily,  I  will  undertake  to 
help  watch  them  and  then  vote  on  them.  What  I  de- 
mand and  have  a  right  to  as  a  democrat  and  as  a  man 
who  wants  to  get  things  for  the  people  is  that  these  ten 
men  shall  look  after  the  other  sixty-five  and  let  me  at- 
tend to  business.  The  other  sixty-five  have  a  right  to 
be  looked  after,  criticized  and  appreciated  by  people  who 
can  do  it,  by  men  who  can  devote  themselves  to  it,  by 
men  we  all  elect  intelligently  to  do  it  for  us — by  men  we 
have  all  looked  through  and  through  and  trust. 

The  last  year  or  so  I  have  been  getting  about  three 

long  communications  a  week  from  the  Railway 

which  has  been  trying  to  make  me  over  into  an  expert 
on  all  the  details  of  its  relation  to  the  Government.  I 
wish  I  had  time  to  know  all  about  it.  Some  of  us  will 
have  to.  Things  are  so  arranged  just  now  in  this  coun- 
try that  probably  if  a  lot  of  us  whose  business  it  is  to 
travel  on  the  railroads  instead  of  running  them  don't 
take  a  hand  at  it  for  a  while  and  butt  in  in  behalf  of 
both  the  railroads  and  the  Government,  there  won't  be 
any  railroads  or  there  won't  be  any  Government. 

But  I  resent  having  this  crisis  put  up  to  me  person- 
ally. I  resent  having  a  pile  a  foot  high  of  things  I  have 
got  to  know  before  I  can  help  the  Government  to  be  fair 
to  the  railroads — or  the  railroads  to  be  fair  to  the  Gov- 
ernment. I  am  better  anyway  at  writing  books.  I  don 't 
want  to  be  jerked  into  a  judge — or  a  corporation  lawyer 
because  I  am  a  voter.  Railroads  always  bewilder  me. 
Even  the  simplest  things  railroads  tell  everybody  about 


44       THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

themselves  are  hard  for  me  to  understand — time-tables 
for  instance ;  and  why  should  a  man  -who  is  always  inno- 
cently taking  Sunday  trains  on  Monday  afternoon  be 
called  on  to  butt  in  on  an  expert  auditor's  job  in  this 
way,  beat  his  Congressman  on  the  head  with  the  poor 
penitent  railroads — with  all  the  details  about  their  poor 
insides — and  with  all  their  back  bills  and  things? 

There  must  be  other  voters  who  feel  about  this  as  I  do. 

Is  this  Democracy  ? 

This  is  what  Democracy  is  to  me — Democracy  is  a  be- 
lief in  the  faithfulness,  ability  and  shrewd  good-hearted- 
ness  of  crowds  and  their  power  to  select  great  and  true 
leaders. 

The  essential  fundamental  principle  of  the  democratic 
form  of  government  is  supposed  to  be  that  more  than 
any  other  form  of  government  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
it  trusts  people.  A  democracy  that  does  not  trust  its 
leaders,  that  does  not  trust  even  its  best  men,  is  not 
as  democratic  as  a  monarchy  that  does.  Some  of  us 
seem  to  think  that  all  that  people  can  be  trusted  to  do 
is  to  pick  out  men  we  can  keep  from  leading  us,  that  it 's 
a  kind  of  religion  to  us  to  select  men  we  can  stop  and 
bother.  They  have  settled  down  to  the  idea  that  this 
is  what  we  are  like — as  if  the  main  qualification  of  a 
candidate  in  America  is  a  gift  of  making  people,  of 
making  in  fact  almost  anybody,  feel  superior  to  him. 
I  believe  I  am  living  in  a  democracy  that  will  dare  to 
elect  experts  in  subjects,  that  will  take  being  a  states- 
man seriously — as  a  special  and  skilled  profession,  an 
expert  engineering  job  in  human  nature,  and  in  getting 
things  out  of  people,  and  for  people.  We  are  getting 
ready  for  great  and  true  leaders  in  America.  Our  peo- 
ple are  getting  ready  to  stake  their  fate  in  picking  them 


45 

out.  Even  our  banks  are.  Our  labor  unions  are.  In 
our  politics  it  is  the  masterful  servants  we  are  taking  to 
most.  Anybody  can  see  it.  There  are  particular  things 
and  men  we  want,  and  the  first  leader  we  have  in  this 
country  who  is  shrewd  enough  about  us  to  see  that  we, 
the  people  of  this  country,  are  not  as  vague  or  cartilag- 
inous as  we  look,  who  treats  us  like  fellow  human 
beings,  who  dares  to  expect  things  of  us  and  dares  to 
expect  to  be  trusted  by  us  and  who  dares  to  keep  still 
long  enough  to  do  things  for  us,  will  show  what  America 
is  like,  in  spite  of  what  she  looks  like,  and  will  bring 
America  out. 

And  America  instead  of  being  a  kind  of  big  slovenly 
adolescent,  perpetually  thirteen-year-old  nation  going 
around  with  its  big  innocent  mouth  open,  will  be  grown 
up  at  last  among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  will  be  a  great 
clear-cut,  clear-headed,  firm-knit,  sinewy  nation  that 
knows  what  it  wants,  and  gets  it — and  does  not  say  much. 


XIII 

THE  RIGHT  TO  VOTE  ALL  DAY 

THIS  principle  which  I  have  applied  in  this  last 
chapter  to  political  democracy  applies  still  more 
forcibly  to  democracy  in  industry,  and  to  the  right  of 
the  people  to  be  waited  on  by  skilled  labor  and  by  skilled 
capital. 

I  do  not  wish  to  bother  to  know  everything  about  how 
everything  I  buy  every  day  is  made,  but  I  do  want  to 
have  arrangements  made  through  a  national  league  to 
which  I  belong,  for  instance,  so  that  I  can  practically 
know  about  the  conditions  under  which  anything  is 
made,  the  moment  I  wish  to. 

There  should  be  as  it  were  a  card  catalogue  or  author- 
ity in  my  town  that  I  can  go  to  and  consult,  which  rep- 
resents me  and  a  hundred  million  people.  This  is  my 
conception  of  what  the  National  League  through  its 
local  branches  could  do  and  do  for  everybody.  It  would 
only  tost  a  few  cents  more  to'  have  a  hundred  million 
men  know  about  a  particular  article  what  ten,  twenty 
or  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  know,  the  moment  they  hap- 
pen to  need  it,  by  looking  it  up  in  the  League's  national 
opinion  of  it  and  national  experience  with  it,  in  a  card 
catalogue  or  what  would  operate  practically  as  a  card 
catalogue. 

We  all  have  the  right  in  this  country  to  spend  our 
money  intelligently.  If  people  want  to  get  our  thousand 

46 


THE  EIGHT  TO  VOTE  ALL  DAY  47 

dollars  a  year,  or  two  thousand  a  year,  or  three,  five,  or 
ten  thousand  a  year,  they  must  show  cause  why  they 
should  have  it,  dollar  for  dollar.  We  want  our  dollars 
to  help  people  to  help  us,  laborers  who  are  helping  the 
country  and  capitalists  who  are  helping  the  country. 
Every  time  I  spend  ten  cents  I  want  to  know  that  I  am 
getting  ten  cents'  worth  of  democracy,  ten  cents'  worth 
of  skilled  capital  and  skilled  labor  working  for  all  of  us. 
I  propose  to  vote  with  my  money  on  the  fate  of  my  coun- 
try and  the  fate  of  democracy  with  silver  coins  and  with 
dollar  bills  every  day.  The  other  kind  of  ballot,  the 
paper  ballot,  I  can  only  use  in  the  nature  of  the  case 
once  or  twice  a  year. 


XIV 

THE  SKILLED   CONSUMER 

THE  way  to  control  the  world  and  govern  the  well- 
being  of  men  is  not  through  the  time  they  have  left 
over,  or  the  time  they  choose  to  lay  one  side  for  it,  but 
directly  and  through  their  most  important  engagements 
and  things  they  do  and  are  sure  to  do  all  the  time. 

A  man's  first  important  engagement  in  this  world  is 
with  his  own  breath. 

His  second  engagement  is  with  his  own  stomach. 

His  third  is  with  the  night  and  with  sleep. 

His  fourth  is  with  posterity,  with  the  unborn,  with 
his  children  and  children's  children. 

His  fifth  is  with  his  ancestors  and  with  God. 

In  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  out  of  a  thousand 
things  a  man  needs  to  have  to  keep  these  engagements- 
things  he  has  to  have  if  he  is  alive  at  all,  he  is  a  con 
sumer. 

What  the  new  League  will  say  to  the  consumer  is 
something  like  this : 

"In  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  things  out  of  a 
thousand  you  have  to  have  to  live,  the  Air  Line  League 
is  organized  to  stand  by  you,  express  you  and  get  the 
attention  of  everybody  to  what  you  want;  and  in  the 
one  thing  you  make  for  everybody  it  is  going  to  express 
everybody  to  you  and  get  your  attention  to  what  every- 
body wants  of  you." 

48 


THE  SKILLED  CONSUMER  49 

This  would  seem  to  most  of  us  to  be  fair  all  around. 

When  one  thinks  of  it,  why  should  one-thousandth 
part  of  what  a  man  has  and  has  to  have,  in  order  to 
live  his  life — the  part  he  makes  himself — be  seen  every- 
where in  this  world  in  every  man's  life  holding  up  and 
bullying,  making  him  pay  high  prices  for,  the  other  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  thousandths? 

Let  the  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  thousandths  of 
a  man's  life  take  possession  of  the  one  thousandth  part 
of  him.  Then  we  will  have  a  civilization. 

Or  at  least  the  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  thou- 
sandths of  him  will  persuade  the  one  thousandth  of  him 
to  cooperate. 

We  have  had  autocracy  of  capital  because  on  the  whole 
in  the  world  until  machinery  came  in,  capital  kept  close 
enough  to  labor  and  to  the  consumer  to  know  what  the 
workmen  and  the  people  wanted. 

Now  that  Capital  has  lost  its  grip,  Laboi*  announces 
that  it  is  going  to  be  after  this  war  the  autocrat,  and 
represent  capital  and  the  consumer. 

The  Air  Line  League  is  here  to  ask,  Why  should  not 
th,e  consumer  represent  himself? 

Capital  has  tried  and  failed  and  has  said,  "Let  the 
public  be  damned."  Now  Labor  has  tried  and  failed, 
and  is  saying  hoarsely  in  a  thousand  cities,  "Let  the 
public  be  damned." 

What  the  Air  Line  League  is  for  is  to  advertise  the 
people  together,  and  let  the  consumers  represent  them- 
selves. 

What  we  have  been  fighting  for  essentially  in  this  war 
is  the  control  of  the  consumers  in  the  world  in  all  na- 
tions. 

When  we  speak  of  democracy  and  of  organizing  the 


50        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

will  of  the  people,  what  we  really  mean  is  organizing 
the  will  of  the  consumers. 

Organizing  the  will  of  the  consumers  is  not  a  holdup. 
A  holdup  by  all  the  people  of  all  the  people  for  all  the 
people  is  Liberty. 


XV 

SAMPLE  DEMOCRACIES 

I  DO  not  want  to  delay  or  bother  people  with  my  defi- 
nition of  democracy,  but  I  do  not  mind  confiding  to 
them  where  I  have  seen  some. 

One  is  always  coming  upon  bits  or  dots  of  democracy 
in  America.  It  is  these  bits  or  dots  of  rough  more  or 
less  unfinished  democracy  we  have  in  America  which 
make  most  of  us  believe  in  the  people  of  this  country. 

Everybody  in  America  knows  of  them. 

There  are  at  least  forty-four  dots  of  democracy — little 
marked-off  places — what  might  be  called  safety  zones 
(everybody  knows  of  them),  even  in  New  York.  There 
are  usually  white  globes  in  front  of  them,  and  a  short 
name  written  in  long  plain  slanting  white  letters  across 
a  huge  piece  of  glass. 

If  anybody  wants  to  see  just  what  democracy  is  like 
in  business  all  he  has  to  do  is  to  go  into  the  nearest 
Childs  restaurant,  order  some  griddle-cakes,  sit  down 
and  eat  and  think.  All  he  really  needs  to  do  is  to  study 
the  menu,  but  of  course  a  menu  is  more  thoroughly 
studied  by  eating  some  of  it. 

One  soon  finds  that  a  menu  may  be  a  little  modest 
every-day  magna  charta  of  democracy  or  it  may  not. 

What  a  menu  has  long  been  for  in  the  typical  res- 
taurant is  to  find  a  way  of  browbeating  and  bewildering 

51  ' 


52        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

a  customer  into  spending  more  money  for  his  luncheon 
than  he  intends  to  when  he  comes  in. 

Rows  of  grieved  and  vaguely  disturbed  people  can  be 
seen  in  restaurants  every  day — being  mowed  down  by 
menus. 

In  a  Childs  restaurant  business  success  is  based  on 
turning  the  whole  idea  of  a  menu  around,  and  instead 
of  the  customer's  coming  in  and  studying  the  menu,  the 
menu  studies  him. 

The  consumer  in  a  Childs  restaurant  is  there  to 
economize  and  the  restaurant  is  there  to  help  him  do  it, 
the  whole  menu  being  constructed  by  experts  in  foods 
for  the  express  purpose  of  telling  the  customer  more 
than  he  knows  about  his  food  and  his  money,  persuading 
him  and  practically  tricking  him  into  spending  less 
money  on  his  luncheon  than  he  intends  to. 

A  business  may  be  said  to  be  a  big  vital  and  winning 
business  in  any  line  in  proportion  as  one  sees  the  con- 
sumers in  it — practically  running  it — running  it  in 
spirit.  A  democratic  business  is  one  which  is  being  run 
as  the  consumers  would  run  it  if  they  knew  how. 

A  business  may  be  said  to  be  a  democratic  business  in 
proportion  as  one  sees  experts  in  it  expressing  crowds. 
One  sees  great  crowds  going  to  and  fro  and  up  and  down 
in  it  acting  for  all  practical  purposes  like  geniuses,  like 
skilled  angels  doing  every  day  offhand  inspired  and  in- 
spiring difficult  adventurous  things  as  a  matter  of  course 
— like  tackling  the  high  cost  of  living. 

"What  the  Air  Line  League  is  for  is  to  make  the  con- 
sumers of  America — the  all-class  class,  class-conscious — 
is  to  organize  the  consumers  of  America  locally  and  na- 
tionally so  that  the  comparative  cooperation  of  crowds 
and  geniuses  and  experts  as  in  Childs'  restaurants,  can 


SAMPLE  DEMOCRACIES  53 

be  assured  in  all  lines  of  business,  taken  over,  improved, 
standardized,  established  as  the  label  of  modern  success- 
ful business  life. 

The  Air  Line  League  definition  of  democracy  would 
be  this: 

A  democracy  may  be  said  to  be  a  state  of  society  in 
which  the  consumers  or  the  people  who  want  things, 
have  the  complete  and  whole-hearted  expert  attention  of 
the  men  who  make  them. 

The  triumph  of  America  and  of  the  other  democracies 
during  the  war  has  been  that  they  have  proved  that 
crowds  can  have  and  can  be  depended  upon  to  have, 
experts,  fifty  thousand  dollar  men  or  anybody  they  want, 
to  wait  on  them  while  they  whip  the  Germans. 

What  the  Air  Line  League  proposes  to  do  (Further 
details  later)  is  to  arrange  through  its  local  and  national 
branches  to  answer  the  sneer  of  the  Germans  that  crowds 
and  experts  in  democracy  can  not  find  a  way  to  keep 
this  up. 

Is  it  true  or  is  it  not  true  that  the  moment  this  war 
is  over  all  our  experts  drop  away — permanently  drop 
away  from  waiting  on  crowds — are  really  going  back 
now  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  thousand  a  year,  to  waiting 
on  themselves  in  just  the  way  the  Germans  said  they 
would  ? 

What  the  Air  Line  League  will  stand  for  will  be  that 
experts  and  crowds  can  be  found  waiting  on  each  other 
and  having  the  mutual  convenience  and  power  of  wait- 
ing on  each  other  during  peace  as  well  as  war. 

Why  should  we  put  up  with  the  idea  of  having  these 
conveniences  and  powers  for  a  mere  little  sidesteppish 
interrupting  thing  like  whipping  the  Germans  and  not 
having  them  all  the  while,  .every  day,  for  ourselves  ? 


XVI 

THE   TOWN   PENDULUM 

rilHE  Air  Line  League  in  its  local,  national  and  in- 
-•-  ternational  branches  will  act  as  a  Listening  Ma- 
chine. 

A  Listening  Machine  may  be  said  to  work  two  ways, 
backward  and  forward.  Worked  forward,  it  listens  to 
people  until  they  feel  understood.  When  the  same  ma- 
chine is  turned  around  and  worked  the  other  way,  it 
makes  people  listen  until  they  understand. 

There  are  people  in  every  town  and  in  every  local 
branch  of  the  League  who  have  what  I  like  to  call  some- 
times, pendulum  temperaments.  People  in  motion  are 
not  as  reliable  and  as  calculable  as  brass.  People  have 
wills,  visions,  individual  emotions  and  lurchings  of  their 
own.  When  a  man  with  a  pendulum  temperament  sees 
a  colossal  pendulum  made  of  crowds  of  people — crowds 
of  employers  and  crowds  of  workmen — swinging  from 
one  extreme  to  another,  the  first  thing  he  wants  to  do 
as  each  issue  comes  up,  local  or  national,  is  to  see  to  it 
that  his  own  mind  and  each  other  man's  mind  in  these 
two  crowds  on  each  side  of  the  question  should  go  twice 
through  the  middle,  to  going  once  to  the  extremes  at 
either  end. 

In  other  words,  The  National  Air  Line  League  will 
act  to  bring  extremes  together — twice  through  the  mid- 
dle to  once  at  each  end — and  local  clubs  will  act  as  at- 

54 


THE  TOWN  PENDULUM  55 

tention-swinging  machines — as  attention-forcing  ma- 
chines between  classes. 

I  might  give  an  illustration: 

The  National  League  in  its  central  office  in  New  York 
gets  a  report  from  the  local  branch  in  the  town  where 
Smith  safety  razors  are  made  that  the  Smith  Works  are 
in  a  chronic  state  of  strikes  and  sabotage  and  sustained 
ugliness  and  inefficiency.  The  Central  Office,  after 
quietly  looking  into  it,  hearing  both  sides  and  finding 
the  charge  is  true,  sends  through  its  local  branches  re- 
ports to  the  ten  million  men  shaving  with  Smith  blades 
every  morning  that  the  workmen  and  managers  of  the 
Smith  factories,  who  are  working  a  nominal  nine  hours 
a  day,  are  spending  three  hours  a  day  in  fighting  with 
each  other  as  to  how  Smith  blades  should  be  made  for 
the  public,  and  six  hours  a  day  in  making  the  blades. 
The  consumed  is  told  by  the' League  that  he  is  paying 
for  nine  hours'  work  a  day  on  his  blades  and  only  get- 
ting six,  and  that  if  the  employers  and  employees  in  the 
Smith  factories  could  be  got  to  listen  to  each  other  and 
to  work  together  the  blades  could  be  had  for  three  cents 
less  apiece. 

The  League  will  then  proceed  through  its  local  branch 
in  the  Smith  town  to  arrest  the  attention  of  the  Smith 
workmen  and  the  Smith  employers.  It  will  suggest  that 
they  get  each  other's  point  of  view  and  sit  down  very 
earnest  and  hear  everything  that  the  other  side  has  to 
say  and  everything  the  other  side  wants  to  do,  until  they 
find  some  way  of  getting  together  and  being  efficient  and 
knowing  how  to  make  Smith  blades. 

If  necessary  in  order  to  get  the  attention  of  the  work-" 
men  and  employers  at  the  Smith  Works  to  the  desira- 
bility of  their  listening  to  each  other,  the  users  of  Smith 


blades  throughout  the  country  will  shave  themselves 
with  their  fathers'  razors  for  three  weeks. 

If  the  Government  says  that  this  is  conspiracy,  and 
that  shutting  up  a  factory  to  make  the  people  in  it  listen 
to  each  other  and  listen  to  the  consumers  is  against  the 
law  of  the  land,  all  the  people  in  America  who  shave 
will  turn  the  Government  out  of  office  and  have  the  law 
changed. 

A  strike  by  workmen  in  a  particular  business  is  a 
holdup  of  all  the  other  workmen  in  the  country,  raises 
the  cost  of  living  for  everybody,  and  is  undemocratic  and 
unfair. 

A  lockout  of  employers  in  a  particular  business  is  a 
holdup  of  all  other  employers  and  workmen,  and  is  un- 
democratic and  unfair. 

In  a  country  of  a  hundred  million  people  a  holdup  con- 
ducted by  a  hundred  million  people  for  the  hundred  mil- 
lion people  is  democracy. 

I  employ  this  rather  threatening  illustration  of  the 
possible  action  of  the  League  in  certain  cases  because 
it  suggests  the  power  of  democracy  when  experts  and 
crowds  act  together — the  fact  that  democracy  can  really 
be  made  to  work,  that  democracy  can  be  as  forcible,  as 
immediate  and  practical  in  dealing  with  autocratic 
classes,  as  autocracy  can. 

But  only  two  or  three  per  cent  of  what  the  League  in 
its  local  and  national  branches  would  really  do  would  be 
like  the  illustration  I  have  used.  The  power  the  League 
would  have  to  do  things  like  this  would  make  doing 
them  unnecessary. 

The  regular  work  of  the  League  would  largely  consist 
in  accepting  invitations  from  factories,  and  in  supplying 
and  training  experts  for  the  purpose  of  conducting  in 


THE  TOWN  PENDULUM    .  57 

a  factory  mutual  advertising  campaigns,  or  studies  in 
attention  between  workmen  and  employers,  adapted  to 
different  types  of  factories. 

The  way  out  for  democracy  in  dealing  with  predatory 
wealth  which  organizes  to  hold  up  the  consumers,  and 
with  predatory  labor  which  organizes  to  hold  up  the  con- 
sumers, is  for  the  consumers  to  organize. 


XVII 

THE  NATIONAL,  LISTENING    MACHINE 

PEOPLr  are  * ••»  much  more  apt  to  bear  in  mind  in 
propoi.  -.,  the  power  of  an  organization  to  be 
ugly,  than  they  are  its  power  not  to  need  to  be  ugly — to 
get  what  it  wants  with  people  by  combining  with  them 
instead  of  fighting  them,  that  perhaps  it  might  be  well 
to  dwell  a  moment  on  the  fact  that  the  power  of  the  con- 
sumers of  the  country  as  organized  in  the  Air  Line 
League,  to  make  it  uncomfortable  for  predatory  labor 
or  predatory  capital,  will  never  be  abused. 

If  what  an  organization  is  for,  is  to  put  the  soul  and 
body  of  a  people  together  it  is  compelled  as  a  matter  of 
course,  to  get  its  own  way  with  the  same  quietness,  dig- 
nity and  power  it  is  telling  other  people  to.  The  first 
business  of  the  Air  Line  League  is  going  to  be,  to  be 
believed  in  by  everybody.  The  way  to  be  believed  in  by 
everybody  is  for  the  League  to  do  itself  the  thing  that 
it  talks  about  doing.  If  in  this  way  the  League  soon 
gets  itself  believed  in  by  everybody,  the  first  thing  peo- 
ple will  notice  about  the  Air  Line  League  will  soon  be 
that  it  is  an  organization  that  can  lick  anybody  in  sight 
with  its  little  finger.  The  next  thing  people  will  notice 
is  that  it  never  gets  so  low  that  it  has  to  do  it. 

The  power  of  labor  unions  and  employers '  associations 
has  frequently  been  abused  because  they  have  many  of 

58 


THE  NATIONAL  LISTENING  MACHINE        59 

them  organized  their  power  for  the  express  purpose  of 
abusing  it. 

It  is  highly  unlikely  that  people  will  need  to  be  afraid 
of  the  power  of  the  Air  Line  League.  An  organization 
which  exists  for  the  express  purpose  of  driving  out  of 
business  people  who  get  what  they  want  by  holdups,  the 
entire  activities  of  which  are  devoted  to  proving  to  peo- 
ple how  much  more  holding  out  a  hand  gets  for  people 
in  business  than  sticking  out  a  fist,  soon  gets  its  fist 
trusted. 

If  the  Air  Line  League  abuses  its  power  it  will  com- 
mit suicide  so  fast  that  people  will  feel  suddenly  safe. 


If  I  were  writing  a  platform  for  the  Air  Line  league, 
it  might  be  put  perhaps  for  all  practical  purpose*  in  one 
sentence. 

Subject — War. 

Object — Stopping  it. 

Predicate — What  we  believe  about  war. 

Verb — What  we  propose  to  do  about  what  we  believe 
about  war. 

Adverb — How  we  propose  to  do  it. 

Period — Peace. 

The  main  trouble  with  the  sentence  forty  nations  are 
trying  to  stutter  out  now,  is  that  there  is  no  predicate, 
no  verb,  no  spinal  column  of  belief. 

The  spinal  column  of  belief  in  the  Air  Line  League — 
the  gist  of  our  platform — is  this  one  sentence: 

PEOPLE  FIGHT  BECAUSE  THEY  CANNOT  GET 
OTHER'S  ATTENTION. 

Everything  we  believe  and  propose  to  do  follows  from 
this. 

The  way  to  stop  war  is  to  advertise,  to  provide  and  set 


60        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

up  in  full  sight  and  in  working  order  before  people  who 
are  trying  to  get  what  they  want  by  war,  a  substitute  for 
war  which  erets  what  they  want  for  them  quicker  and 
better. 

The  way  to  keep  people  who  fight  from  fighting  is  to 
stand  over  them,  advertise  to  them  and  dramatize  to 
them  how  much  more  people  can  get  by  listening  to  each 
other.  Then  compel  them  to  listen. 

We  do  not  believe  in  fighting  on  the  one  hand  nor  in 
an  anaemic  and  temporary  thing  like  arbitration  on  the 
other.  All  that  men  really  do  in  arbitration  is  to  hire 
their  listening  done  for  them  by  other  people. 

Listening  which  men  were  created  to  do  themselves, 
which  is  done  for  them  by  others,  only  lasts  a  minute. 

The  three  plain  spiritual  brutal  facts  that  capital  and 
labor  have  to  reckon  with  and  conform  to  in  dealing  with 
human  nature  to-day  are  these: 

Disputes  can  not  be  fought  out — not  even  by  the  peo- 
ple themselves. 

Disputes  can  not  be  arbitrated  out  by  other  people  for 
them. 

All  other  people  are  for  in  a  fight  is  to  compel  the 
fighters  to  listen  to  each  other. 

Doing  anything  less  than  compelling  the  fighters  to 
listen  to  each  other,  is  visionary,  cowardly,  temporary 
and  impracticable. 

The  moment  people  stop  fighting,  begin  listening  to 
each  other  and  begin  feeling  listened  to,  nobody  can  hire 
them  to  organize  to  fight  each  other.  They  organize  to 
listen  to  each  other. 

What  the  Air  Line  League  is  for  in  every  nation,  in 
every  city,  town  and  village  where  a  branch  is  set  up, 
is  to  organize  people  to  listen  to  each  other. 


THE  NATIONAL  LISTENING  MACHINE        61 

I  do  not  think  any  one  is  going  to  feel  obliged  to  feel 
afraid  of  the  power  of  a  League,  that  puts  daily  before 
its  own  face,  before  everybody's  face — before  every 
letter  it  writes,  and  before  everything  it  does,  across  its 
letter-head,  this  chapter  in  nine  words. 

PEOPLE  FIGHT  BECAUSE  THEY  CANNOT  GET 
EACH  OTHER'S  ATTENTION. 


XVIII 

HOW  THE  NATIONAL  LISTENING  MACHINE  WILL  WORK 

NINE  people  out  of  ten  who  do  wrong  in  business, 
do  it  because  they  feel  that  if  they  do  not  do  the 
wrong  to  some  one  else,  some  one  else  will  do  the  wrong 
to  them.  In  the  last  analysis,  some  way  of  bringing 
about  conscription  for  universal  service  in  business  is 
the  only  way  in  which  we  can  be  assured  that  the  crimi- 
nals and  exploiters  in  any  particular  line  of  industry 
will  not,  at  least  temporarily,  control  and  ruin  the  busi- 
ness. What  the  Air  Line  League  would  do  practically 
would  be  to  organize  American  business-men  into  a  kind 
of  "I  Won't  If  You  Won't"  Club.  A  very  large  ma- 
jority of  men  daily  see  that  certain  things  ought  not  to 
be  done.  It  is  not  rightmindedness  in  people  that  is 
needed  so  much  as  the  organization  of  the  rightminded- 
ness so  that  those  who  are  wrong  can  be  crowded  out. 
My  idea  of  the  general  policy  of  the  Air  Line  League 
would  be  to  bring  the  public  to  cooperate  with  the  best 
men  in  each  industry  in  such  a  way  as  to  drive  the 
worst  ones  out.  Probably  from  a  publicity  point  of 
view  the  best  way  to  do  would  be  for  the  League  to 
pick  out  the  nine  best  factories  in  the  country  in  which 
the  laborers  have  a  working  understanding  and  a  prac- 
tical listening  arrangement  with  their  employers,  and 
help  the  laborers  in  these  nine  factories  advertise  to 
other  laborers  in  the  country,  at  specific  times  and 

62 


HOW  THE  MACHINE  WILL  WORK          63 

places,  and  to  capital  throughout  the  country,  how  they 
like  it.  One  factory  in  ten,  if  necessary,  could  be  se- 
lected for  national  discipline.  A  notorious  factory  could 
be  picked  out  in  which  the  laborers  had  the  worst 
listening  arrangement,  and  in  which  both  the  employers 
and  employees  were  imposing  upon  each  other  to  their 
own  detriment  and  the  detriment  of  their  customers  the 
most ;  and  could  be  publicly  disciplined  by  the  National 
League  acting  through  its  local  clubs  everywhere.  Co- 
operating with  nine  factories  and  disciplining  one  would 
be  my  idea  of  the  best  way  to  get  results.  All  that  would 
need  to  be  done  would  be  to  make  a  list  of  all  the  in- 
dustries in  the  country  and  keep  the  buyers  of  the 
country  informed  about  them  through  the  local  Clubs. 

Industrial  democracy  is  coming  in  this  country  one 
industry  at  a  time.  Each  industry  is  going  to  work 
out  its  own  salvation  by  emancipating  and  freeing  the 
hands  of  the  men  who  can  run  it  best  in  the  interests  of 
the  public — that  is,  run  it  with  the  lowest  prices  to  the 
public,  the  highest  prices  to  the  wage  earners,  and  a 
surplus  for  improvements,  inventions  and  experiments 
in  rendering  its  product  of  more  service  to  all. 

I  am  not  in  favor  of  having  capitalists  try  to  con- 
vince labor  as  a  class,  nor  having  labor  try  to  convince 
capital  as  a  class.  The  skilled  labor  which  has  been  con- 
vinced by  capital  should  convince  the  others  through 
the  services  of  twenty  thousand  local  Clubs,  and  skilled 
capital  which  has  succeeded  in  being  believed  in  by  its 
labor  will  do  the  same  in  convincing  other  capital. 


XIX 

MAKING  A  RI6HT  8TAJRT 

IT  will  be  seen  that  the  idea  I  have  in  mind  might  be 
imagined  as  a  kind  of  civic  federation  club,  a  super- 
consumers'  league,  and  a  super-advertising  club  rolled 
into  one.  Rolling  these  three  ideas  into  one  is  a  tem- 
perament, and  the  men  who  are  full  of  the  vision  of 
what  can  be  done  with  them  rolled  into  one,  and  of  what 
is  the  matter  with  them  if  they  are  not  rolled  into  one, 
must  be  the  controlling  powers  in  the  new  organization. 
The  Civic  Federation  has  been  a  safe  plodding  vague  in- 
stitution because  it  has  not  had  a  vigorous  vision  of 
itself,  and  has  not  been  conducted  by  men  who  have  a 
personal  genius  for  conceiving  and  carrying  out  coop- 
eration between  capital  and  labor.  It  has  been  weak, 
theoretical,  and  full  of  generalization  because  it  has 
not  had  the  driving  force  that  such  a  man  as  Schwab 
— some  Schwab  in  publicity  instead  of  steel — could 
have  given  it. 

The  Consumers'  League  has  been  a  useful,  suggestive 
institution,  and  has  done  work  of  value  (as  it  would 
doubtless  say  itself)  in  a  more  or  less  nagging  and 
sporadic  way,  but  it  has  had  no  national  militant  vision 
or  sense  of  thoroughness  in  what  it  could  do  because  it 
lacked  the  advertising  clinch,  the  advertising  willfulness 
and  irresistibleness  that  puts  things  through. 

The  new  organizations — as  a  super-consumers'  league, 

64 


MAKING  A  RIGHT  START  65 

a  super-advertising  club — will  converge  these  two  ideas 
into  a  huge  momentum,  into  a  national  organized  drive 
or  vision  of  making  men  see  together  and  act  together, 
until  we  work  out  social  democracy  in  every  man's  busi- 
ness, in  every  man's  store,  and  the  daily  work  of  every 
man 's  life.  Programs  which  have  merely  been  yearned  at 
before,  which  have  been  sleazily  groped  at  and  general- 
ized over  and  guessed  at  before,  will  be  gathered  up,  ar- 
ticulated, melted  into  a  huge  common  national  action 
by  men  who  have  the  consuming  passion  and  genius  for 
touching  the  imaginations  of  others.  The  selection  and 
articulation  of  these  men  in  all  communities  is  all  that 
is  necessary.  Everything  is  waiting  and  ready.  First 
we  will  get  the  men  together  who  have  the  fire.  Then 
we  will  put  fire  under  the  boilers  of  the  nation  and  turn 
the  drive-wheels  of  a  world. 


XX 

UP  TO  THE  PEOPLE 

nnHERE  are  several  reasons  which,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
A  show  that  my  plan  is  not  visionary,  and  that  the 
skilled  consumers  who  organize  their  skill  in  the  way  I 
have  outlined,  are  bound  to  succeed  in  doing  what  now 
most  needs  to  be  done  for  high  production  and  team- 
work in  the  industries  of  the  country. 

1.  The  consumer  class  is  practically  everybody. 

2.  The  consumer  class  is  the  most  disinterested,  and 
is  identified  with  both   capital  and  labor.     It   is  the 
natural  umpire  between  them.     Its  line  of  least  resist- 
ance is  to  act  fairly. 

3.  The  interests  of  the  consumer  class  lead  it  not  only 
to  act  fairly  but  to  act  energetically.     The  consumer 
class  as  a  class  will  want  to  pay  extra  for  as  few  quar- 
rels between  the  people  it  is  paying  to  make  things  for 
it  as  possible.    The  consumer  always  pays  for  all  quar- 
rels, and  anything  that  is  good  for  the  employers  and 
employees  in  the  long  run  can  not  but  be  good  for  the 
consumer  in  the  long  run. 

4.  In  the  last  analysis,  the  consumers  in  any  given 
industry,  if  duly  organized  as  capital  and  labor  are  now, 
will  not  only  have  the  disposition  to  act  fairly  in  a  quar- 
rel   between    the    people    who    are    making    something 
that  they  buy,  and  the  disposition  to  act  quickly  o'i  1. 
1    YC  the  f glit  over  with,  but  they  will  have  as  buyers 

66 


UP  TO  THE  PEOPLE  67 

the  power  as  a  last  resort  to  choose  the  factories  they 
will  deal  with ;  to  do  their  buying  naturally  and  cheaply, 
and  from  factories  that  are  entirely  in  the  business  of 
making  goods  and  not  half  in  the  business  of  making 
goods  and  half  in  the  business  of  making  civil  war.  The 
nationally  organized  consumers  will  naturally  adver- 
tise to  people  which  firms  take  the  least  time  off  for 
fighting,  and  put  all  their  work  into  the  goods  they 
expect  the  people  to  pay  for. 

This  national  advertising  campaign  will  be  operated 
through  national  headquarters,  cooperating  with  local 
branches  organized  in  all  manufacturing  towns  and 
cities.  The  national  headquarters  will  act  as  a  clear- 
ing house  for  the  materials,  facts,  illustrations  and  dem- 
onstrations which  the  local  centers  collect  and  distribute 
and  apply,  proving  that  democracy  works. 

Everything  turns,  in  getting  a  thing  done  to-day,  on 
seeing  to  it  that  the  people  who  take  it  up  are  the  people 
who  can  best  get  the  attention  of  others. 

The  consumer  class  cannot  fail  because  they  are  the 
best  people  in  the  country  to  compel  everybody  to  listen. 

The  consumers  are  the  best  people  to  get  everybody  to 
listen  because  they  are  the  best  listeners. 

The  consumers  are  the  best  people  to  start  anything 
in  America  and  keep  it  going  because  everybody  in 
America  cares  what  the  consumers  think,  wants  to  be 
on  good  terms  with  them,  and  to  please  them,  wants  to 
be  heard  by  them  and  wants  to  hear  what  they  say. 


XXI 

THE  WAY  FOR  A  NATION  TO  SPEAK  UP 

THE  Air  Line  League  is  not  visionary.     The  people 
of  this  country  have  expressed  an  idea.    They  can 
do  it  again. 

Not  long  after  the  American  part  in  the  war  was 
under  way  our  Government  had  the  idea — which  it  had 
not  had  at  all  when  it  began — that  if  America  was  going 
to  do  her  part  in  defeating  the  Germans,  or  if  we  were 
to  come  anywhere  near  defeating  the  Germans,  it  would 
only  be  possible  through  an  unexpected  degree  of  self- 
sacrifice  on  the  part  of  our  people  all  day,  every  day 
until  the  war  was  over. 

Our  people  did  not  believe  this  idea. 

How  could  our  Government  get  through  to  each  man 
in  America  that  winning  the  war  depended  on  him? 
Get  through  to  each  woman  and  each  child  that  some- 
thing must  be  given  up  by  each  of  us  to  defeat  the 
Germans?  The  Government  not  only  wanted  to  ad- 
vertise to  the  people  how  desperately  the  country  needed 
them — every  man  of  them — but  it  wanted  also  to  in- 
spire the  people  and  to  let  the  people  see  their  power 
themselves.  They  wanted  to  teach  the  nations  nation- 
conscience,  world-conscience,  and  prove  to  the  people 
and  to  the  world  how  reverently  the  men,  women  and 
children  of  America  could  be  depended  upon  to  respond 
to  an  appeal  to  defeat  the  Germans. 

68 


THE  WAY  FOR  A  NATION  TO  SPEAK  UP      69 

I  fell  asleep  in  Maine  one  night  not  long  ago,  and 
woke  up  in  the  Grand  Central  Station.  I  came  out  into 
that  first  gasolineless,  dreamlike  Sunday  we  had  dur- 
ing the  war. 

A  single,  forlorn,  drooping  fifty-dollar  horse,  which 
I  could  have  had  for  a  few  minutes  perhaps  for  a  hun- 
dred dollars,  greeted  me. 

I  mocked  the  driver  a  little,  and  walked  on,  feeling 
irreverent  about  human  nature.  I  went  over  and  stood 
and  looked  up  Madison  Avenue  and  looked  down  Madi- 
son Avenue. 

I  had  come  from  communing  with  the  sea,  from  com- 
muning with  a  hundred  thousand  lonely  spruces,  and 
I  found  myself  upon  what  seemed  to  me  the  loneliest,  the 
stillest,  the  most  dreamlike  place  I  had  ever  seen  upon 
the  earth — a  corner  of  Madison  Avenue.  It  seemed  like 
a  kind  of  vision  to  stand  and  look  up  and  down  that 
great,  white,  sunny,  praying  silence.  I  looked  up  at  the 
sign  on  the  corner.  It  really  was  Madison  Avenue. 

It  was  as  if  the  hand  of  a  hundred  million  people  had 
reached  out  three  thousand  miles.  It  was  as  if  a  hun- 
dred million  people  had  met  me  at  the  corner  and  told 
me — one  look,  one  silence :  ' '  Here  is  this  street  we  offer 
up  that  the  will  of  God  should  go  by.  We  are  going  to 
defeat  the  Germans  with  the  silence  on  this  street. ' ' 

I  stood  and  looked  at  the  silent  empty  pavement 
crowded  with  the  invisible — a  parade  of  the  prayers  of 
a  mighty  people;  and  it  came  over  me  that  not  only 
this  one  street,  but  ten  thousand  more  like  it,  were 
reaching,  while  I  looked,  across  the  country.  I  saw  my 
people  hushing  a  thousand  cities,  making  the  thunder- 
thinking  streets  of  Chicago,  of  San  Francisco  and  New 
York  like  the  aisles  of  churches. 


70        THE  GHOST  IX  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

There  was  no  need  of  church  bells  the  first  gasoline- 
less  Sunday,  reminding  one  noisily,  cheerily,  a  little 
thoughtlessly — the  way  they  do — that  God  was  on  the 
earth. 

One  could  watch  two  thousand  years  turning  on  a 
hinge.  But  the  first  gasolineless  Sunday — five  hundred 
thousand  miles  of  still  roads  lifted  themselves  up  under 
the  sky  on  the  mountains,  out  on  the  plains,  saying  for 
a  hundred  million  people,  "God  still  reigneth. "  And 
twenty  million  little  birds  stood  on  the  edges  of  the  trees 
and  stared  down  at  five  hundred  thousand  miles  of  still 
white  country  roads  wondering  what  had  happened ! 

I  cannot  quite  express,  and  never  shall  be  able  to,  the 
sense  I  had  when  I  waked  up  in  the  Grand  Central  Sta- 
tion that  morning,  when  out  of  communing  with  the  sea, 
with  a  hundred  thousand  lonely  spruces,  and  out  of  the 
great  roaring  dark  of  the  night  I  stepped  into  the  street, 
into  the  long,  white  silent  prayer  of  my  people — and 
prayed  with  a  hundred  million  people  its  silent  prayer 
for  a  world.  I  saw  the  mighty  streets  of  a  nation,  from 
Maine  to  California,  lifted  up  as  a  vow  to  God. 

We  have  learned  one  thing  about  ourselves  and  our 
attention  during  the  war.  One  gasolineless  Sunday  at- 
tracts more  attention  to  this  country,  to  the  great  wager 
it  had  put  up  on  whipping  the  Germans,  than  twenty- 
four  full  page  ads  in  a  thousand  papers  could  do. 

Mr.  Garfield  may  not  have  turned  out  to  be  a  genius 
in  mining  coal,  but  in  undermining  the  daily  personal 
habits  of  a  hundred  million  people — in  advertising  to 
people  wholesale,  so  that  people  breathe  advertisement, 
eat  advertisement,  make  the  very  streets  they  walk  on 
and  the  windows  they  look  out  of  into  advertisements  of 


THE  WAY  FOR  A  NATION  TO  SPEAK  UP       71 

the  fate  of  their  country,  into  prayers  for  a  world — • 
Mr.  Garfield  had  few  equals. 

To  advertise  a  religion  or  a  war,  stop  the  intimate 
daily  personal  habits  of  a  hundred  million  people.  Se- 
lect something  like  being  warmed  or  like  being  sweet- 
ened that  does  not  leave  out  a  mortal  soul  or  slight  a 
single  stomach  in  the  country. 

To  advertise  history,  to  advertise  the  next  two  hun- 
dred years  to  a  hundred  million  people — go  in  through 
the  kitchen  door  of  every  house  with  ten  pounds  of  flour 
when  they  want  twenty,  with  two  pounds  of  sugar  when 
they  ordered  eight. 

Make  every  butcher  boy  a  prophet.  Make  people  sip 
their  coffee  thinking  of  the  next  two  hundred  years. 
Make  streets  into  posters.  Make  people  look  out  of 
their  windows  on  streets — thousands  of  miles  of  streets 
that  stretch  like  silent  prayers,  like  mighty  vows  of  a 
great  people  to  defeat  the  Germans! 

We  learned  during  the  war  that  the  way  to  get  the 
attention  of  a  hundred  million  people,  the  way  to  turn 
our  own  attention  in  America,  the  attention  of  our  very 
cats  and  dogs  to  whipping  Germany — was  to  interrupt 
people's  personal  daily  habits. 

The  way  for  a  great  free  people  to  express  an  idea 
is  to  dramatize  it  to  the  people  to  whom  we  are  trying 
to  express  it. 

The  way  for  the  American  people  to  express  our  feel- 
ings to  capitalists  and  laborers  who  seem  to  think  we 
make  no  difference  is  to  think  up  and  set  at  work  some 
form  of  dramatizing  the  idea  in  what  we  are  doing,  so 
that  the  people  we  want  to  reach  will  look  up  and  can 
forget  us  hardly  an  hour  in  the  day. 


72        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

The  moral  from  America 's  first  gasless  Sunday  for  the 
American  people,  in  expressing  themselves  to  business 
men  who  say  they  are  serving  us,  is  plain.  I  whisper  it 
in  the  ears  of  a  hundred  million  consumers  as  one 
of  the  working  ideas  of  the  Air  Line  League. 

Our  general  idea  of  the  way  to  deal  with  people  who 
will  not  listen  is  not  to  speak  to  them,  but  to  do  things 
to  them  that  will  make  them  wish  we  would,  do  things  to 
them  that  will  make  them  come  over  and  ask  us  to  speak 
to  them.  Let  a  hundred  million  people  do  something  to 
the  people  who  take  turns  in  holding  us  up,  that  will 
make  them  look  up  and  wonder  what  {he  hundred  mil- 
lion people  think. 

The  true  way  to  advertise  is  to  make  the  people  you 
advertise  to^  do  it.  To  get  an  idea  over  to  the  Germans 
do  something  to  them  that  will  make  them  come  over  to 
us — come  all  the  way  over  to  us  and  extract  it.  The 
same  principle  is  going  to  be  applied  next  by  the  Public 
Group  in  industry.  We  will  do  something  that  will 
make  them — capital  and  labor — say.  "What  do  you 
mean  ? ' ' 

Then  let  them  study  us  and  search  us  and  search 
their  own  minds  and  find  out. 


BOOK  II 

WHAT  EACH  MAN  EXPECTS  OF  HIMSELF 

0.  S.  L.  TO  HIMSELF 


G.   S.  L.   TO  HIMSELF 

THE  most  important  and  necessary  things  a  man 
ever  says  sometimes,  are  the  things  he  feels  he 
must  say  particularly  to  himself. 

In  what  I  have  to  say  about  this  nation  I  have 
stripped  down  to  myself. 

Of  course  any  man  in  expressing  privately  his  own 
soul  to  himself,  may  hit  off  a  nation,  because  of  course 
when  one  thinks  of  it,  that  is  the  very  thing  every- 
body in  a  nation  would  do,  probably  if  he  had  tune. 

But  that  may  or  may  not  be.  All  I  know  is  that  in 
this  book,  and  in  a  grave  national  crisis  like  this  I  do 
not  want  to  tell  other  people  what  they  ought  to  do. 

A  large  part  of  what  is  the  matter  with  the  world  this 
minute  is  the  way  telling  other  people  what  they  ought 
to  do,  is  being  attended  to. 

I  do  not  dare,  for  one,  to  let  myself  go.  I  am  afraid 
I  would  be  among  the  worst  if  I  got  started  joining  in 
the  scrimmage  of  setting  everybody  right. 

During  the  last  three  months,  the  more  desperate  the 
state  of  the  world  gets  from  day  to  day,  the  more  I 
feel  that  the  only  safe  person  for  me  to  write  to  or  for 
me  to  give  good  advice  to,  is  myself. 

I  have  always  carried  what  I  call  a  Day  Book  in  my 
pocket  and  if  anything  happens  to  my  mind  or  to  my 
pocket  book — in  a  railway  station,  in  a  trolley  car,  or 

75 


76        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

on  a  park  bench,  or  up  on  Mount  Tom — -wherever  I  am, 
I  put  it  down — put  it  down  with  the  others  and  see  what 
it  makes  happen  to  me. 

As  the  reader  will  see,  the  things  that  follow  are 
taken  out  bodily  from  this  book  to  myself. 

On  the  other  hand  I  want  to  say  deliberately  before 
anybody  goes  any  further  and  in  order  to  be  fair  all 
around,  this  is  a  book  or  rather  part  of  a  book  a  hun- 
dred million  people  would  write  if  they  had  time.  It 
has  been  written  to  express  certain  things  a  hundred 
million  people  want  during  the  next  four  years  from 
the  next  President,  and  with  the  end  in  view  of  getting 
them,  I  am  bringing  up  in  it  certain  things  I  have 
thought  of  that  I  would  do,  and  begin  to  do,  next  week 
if  I  were  the  hundred  million  people. 

I  do  not  think  I  could  deny  in  court  on  a  Bible,  if 
driven  to  it,  that  if  the  hundred  million  people  were 
to  sit  down  and  write  a  book  just  now,  I  really  believe 
it  would  be — at  least  in  the  main  gist  and  spirit  of  it, 
like  mine. 

Nearly  every  man  in  the  hundred  million  people — in 
what  we  call  helplessly  "the  public* group"  and  looking 
on  at  strikes  would  be  ready,  except  in  his  own  strike, 
to  write  a  book  like  this. 

I  cannot  prove  this  about  my  book,  but  the  hundred 
million  people  can  prove  it  and  do  something  that  will 
prove  it. 

And  the  two  great  political  parties  in  their  coming 
conventions — one  or  both  of  them,  I  believe,  is  going  to 
be  obliged  to  give  them  a  chance  to  try.  But  it  is  not 
up  to  me.  Copying  off  this  book  is  as  far  as  I  go  with 
people. 

And  the  book  is  not  to  them.    It  is  not  even  for  them. 


G.  S.  L.  TO  HIMSELF  77 

This  book  is  to  me.  I  have  been  trying  to  save  my  soul 
with  it  in  the  cataclysm  of  a  world.  It  is  easy  and  light- 
hearted,  but  take  it  off  its  guard  every  laugh  is  a  prayer 
or  a  cry. 


II 


IF  I  WERE  A  NATION 

ECONOMICS,  I  suspect,  are  much  simpler  than  they 
look. 

The  soul  of  a  people  is  as  simple,  direct  and  human  in 
getting  connected  up  with  a  body  and  having  the  use 
of  a  body,  in  this  world,  as  a  man  is. 

Why  should  I  propose,  if  I  were  a  nation — just  be- 
cause I  am  being  a  hundred  million  people  instead  of 
one,  to  let  myself  be  frowned  down  as  a  human  being, 
by  figures,  muddled  by  the  Multiplication  Table — by  a 
really  simple  thing  like  there  being  so  many  of  me? 

I  am  human — a  plain  fellow  human  being — and  if  the 
United  States  would  act  more  like  me  or  act  as  prac- 
tically almost  any  man  I  know  would  act,  when  it  is 
really  put  up  to  him — forty  nations  in  his  yard  waiting 
for  him  to  do  what  he  ought  to  do,  our  present  view  of 
our  present  problem  would  at  once  become  direct  and 
deep  and  simple. 

All  that  is  the  matter  with  it  is  that  so  many  Senates 
have  sat  on  it. 

Seduce  it  to  its  lowest  terms,  boil  it  down,  boil  even 
a  Senate  down  to  one  human  being  being  human — boil 
it  down  to  a  baby  even — and  what  it  would  do  would 
be  deep,  direct  and  wise.  A  baby  would  at  least  keep 
on  being  human  and  close  to  essentials. 

And  that  is  all  there  is  to  it. 

78 


IF  I  WERE  A  NATION  79 

The  other  things  that  awe  us  and  befuddle  us  all  come 
from  our  not  being  as  human  as  we  are,  from  our  being 
more  like  Senators  and  from  being  on  Committees. 


The  other  day  in  Russia  a  thousand  employees  took 
their  employer  away  from  his  desk,  chucked  him  into  a 
wheelbarrow  at  the  door,  rolled  him  home  through  the 
crowds  in  the  streets  and  told  him  to  stay  there. 

The  crowds  laughed.  And  the  thousand  employees 
went  back  saying  they  would  run  the  factory  them- 
selves. 

A  little  while  afterward,  when  the  thousand  employees 
had  tried  running  the  factory  without  the  employer 
they  sent  a  Committee  up  to  the  house  to  ask  him  to 
come  back  to  his  desk. 

He  told  the  Committee  he  would  not  return  with 
them.  He  said  that  a  committee  could  not  get  him.  The 
thousand  men  had  rolled  him  away  through  jters  in  the 
streets  in  a  wheelbarrow,  and  now  if  the  thousand  men 
wanted  him  they  could  come  with  their  wheelbarrow  and 
roll  him  back. 

The  thousand  came  with  their  wheelbarrow  and  rolled 
him  back. 

The  crowds  laughed. 

But  the  thousand  men  and  their  employer  were  sober 
and  happy — had  some  imagination  about  each  other  and 
went  to  work. 

If  I  were  a  nation,  the  first  question  I  would  ask  would 
be,  "Why  bother  with  wheelbarrows,  and  with  being 
obliged  in  this  melodramatic  Russian  way  to  act  an  idea 
all  out  in  order  to  see  it?" 

In  America  we  propose  to  come  through  to  this  same 
idea  by  being  human,  by  using  our  brains  on  our  fel- 


80        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

low  human  beings,  by  hoeing  each  other's  imaginations. 

The  issue  on  which  our  brains  have  got  to  be  used  is 
one  which  grows  logically  out  of  the  two  main  new  char- 
acteristic elements  in  our  modern  industrial  life. 

These  are  the  Mahogany  Desk  and  the  Cog. 


Ill 

WHAT   THE  MAHOGANY   DESK  IS   GOING   TO  DO 

rjlHE  old  employer  in  the  days  before  machinery  came 
A  in  used  to  hoe  in  the  next  row  with  his  employee. 

The  next  problem  of  industrial  democracy  consists  in 
making  a  man  at  a  mahogany  desk  with  nothing  on  it, 
look  to  a  laborer  as  if  he  were  hoeing  alongside  him  in 
the  next  row. 

To  get  the  laborer  to  understand  and  do  team  work  a 
man  must  find  some  way  of  visualizing,  or  making  an 
honest  impressive  moving  picture  of  what  he  does  at  his 
desk. 

A  polished  mahogany  desk  with  nothing  on  it  doe? 
not  look  very  laborious  to  a  laboring  man. 

In  order  to  have  democracy  in  business  successful, 
what  an  employer  has  to  do  is  to  find  a  substitute  for 
hoeing  in  the  next  row. 

His  workman  wants  to  keep  his  eye  on  him,  watch 
him  hoeing  faster  than  he  is  and  see  the  perspiration  on 
his  brow. 

The  problem  of  the  employer  in  other  words  to-day,  is 
how  to  make  his  mahogany  desk  sweat.  It  really  does 
for  all  practical  purposes  of  course,  but  how  can  he 
make  it  look  so? 

In  the  book  a  hundred  million  people  would  write  if 
they  had  tim£,  the  first  ten  chapters  should  be  devoted 
to  searching  out  and  inventing  in  behalf  of  employers 

81 


82 

and  setting  in  action  in  behalf  of  employers,  on  a  mas- 
sive and  national  scale,  ways  in  which  employers  can 
dramatize  to  workmen  the  way  they  work. 

Very  soon  now,  everywhere — much  harder  than  hoe- 
ing in  the  next  row — with  the  sweat  rolling  off  their 
brows,  employers  will  sit  at  their  desks  hoeing  their 
workmen 's  imaginations. 

The  other  main  point  in  the  book  the  hundred  million 
people  would  write  if  they  could,  would  be  the  precise 
opposite  of  this  one.  I  would  devote  the  second  ten 
chapters  I  think,  not  to  Mahogany  Desks,  or  to  the  but- 
tons on  them  directing  machines,  but  to  Cogs. 

The  second  great  point  the  hundred  million  people 
will  have  to  meet  and  will  have  to  see  a  way  out  for  in 
their  book,  is  the  way  a  Cog  feels  about  being  a  Cog. 

If  a  Cog  in  a  big  locomotive  could  take  a  day  off  and 
go  around  and  watch  the  drivewheel  and  pistons — watch 
the  smoke  coming  out  of  the  smokestack  and  the  water 
scooping  up  from  between  the  rails — watch  the  three 
hundred  faces  in  the  train  looking  out  of  the  windows 
and  the  great  world  booming  by,  and  if  the  Cog  could 
then  say,  "I  belong  with  all  this  and  I  am  helping  and 
making  it  possible  for  all  these  people  to  do  and  to  have 
all  this!"  And  if  the  Cog  could  then  slip  back  and  go 
on  just  being  a  cog, — the  cog  would  be  being  the  kind 
of  a  cog  a  man  is  supposed  to  be. 

*He  would  be  being  the  kind  of  a  cog  a  man  is  sup- 
posed to  be  in  a  democracy -machine  in  distinction  from 
a  king-machine. 

What  is  more,  if  a  Cog  did  this,  or  if  arrangements 
were  studied  out  for  some  little  inkling  of  a  chance  to 
do  it,  he  would  be  making  his  job  as  a  Cog  one  third 
easier  and  happier  and  three  times  as  efficient. 


WHAT  THE  DESK  IS  GOING  TO  DO         83 

A  man  is  created  to  be  the  kind  of  Cog  that  works 
best  when  it  is  allowed  to  do  its  work  in  this  way.  God 
created  him  when  He  drove  in  one  rivet  to  feel  the 
whole  of  the  ship.  It  is  feeling  the  whole  of  the  ship 
that  makes  being  a  Cog  worth  while. 

The  great  work  of  the  American  people  in  the  next 
four  years  is  to  work  out  for  American  industry  the . 
fate  of  the  Cog  in  it. 

The  fate  of  democracy  turns  next  on  our  working 
out  a  way  of  allowing  a  Cog  some  imagination,  or  some 
substitute  for  imagination  in  its  daily  work — something 
that  the  rest  of  the  Cog — the  whole  man  in  the  Cog 
can  have,  which  will  bring  his  spirit,  his  joy  and  his 
power  to  bear  on  his  daily  work. 

This  is  the  second  of  the  two  main  points  the  hun- 
dred million  people  would  make  in  their  book  if  they 
had  time. 

These  two  main  points — getting  labor  to  see  how  a 
mahogany  desk  sweats — getting  the  mahogany  desk  to 
put  itself  in  the  place  of  a  Cog,  know  how  a  Cog  feels 
and  what  makes  a  Cog  work — are  points  which  are  going 
to  be  made  successfully  and  quickly  in  proportion  as 
they  are  taken  up  in  the  right  spirit  and  with  a  method 
— a  practical  human  working  method  which  so  expresses 
and  dramatizes  that  right  spirit  that  it  will  be  impos- 
sible for  people  not  to  respond  to  it. 

I  am  not  undertaking  in  this  part  of  my  book  to  make 
an  inquiry  as  to  what  the  right  spirit  is,  or  what  the 
right  method  is  that  a  hundred  million  people  ought  to 
adopt. 

I  am  a  somewhat  puzzled  and  determined  person 
and  I  am  instituting  out  loud  a  searching  inquiry  as  to 
what  I  am  going  to  do  myself  and  what  the  principles. 


84:        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

and  methods  are  that  I  should  be  governed  by  in  doing 
ray  personal  part,  and  conducting  my  own  mind  and 
judgment  toward  the  movements  and  the  men  about  me. 

To  avoid  generalizing,  I  might  as  well  give  my  idea 
the  way  it  came  to  me — one  man's  idea  of  how  one  man 
feels  he  wants  to  act  when  being  lied  to. 

I  do  not  say  in  so  many  words,  I  was  lied  to.  I  do 
not  know.  A  great  many  people  every  day  find  them- 
selves in  situations  where  they  do  not  know.  The  ques- 
tion I  am  asking  of  myself  is,  how  can  a  man  or  a  public 
take  a  fair  human  and  constructive  attitude  when  one 
does  not  know  and  cannot  know  for  the  time  being,  all 
that  it  is  to  the  point  to  know? 

A  stupendous  amount  of  red-flagism,  unrest  and  ex- 
pensive unreasonableness  would  be  swept  away  in  this 
country  if  we  all  had  in  mind  to  use  for  ourselves  when 
called  for  the  following  rules  for  being  lied  to. 

(Not  that  I  am  going  to  lumber  people's  minds  up 
by  numbering  them  as  rules  out  loud.  They  are  all  here 
— in  what  follows — the  spirit  of  them,  and  people  can 
make  tneir  own  rules  for  themselves  as  they  go  along.) 


(Charles  Schwab  or  Anybody) 

dropped  in,  in  the  rain  the  other  night,  and  sat 

by  my  fireplace  and  said :  ' '  Charles  Schwab  is  the  Prince 
of  Liars.  He  says  one  thing  about  labor  and  does 
another."  He  went  on  to  say  things  he  said  other 
people  said. 

There  are  two  courses  of  action  to  take  about  Charles 
Schwab's  being  the  Prince  of  Liars. 

One  way  is  to  expose  what  he  says. 

The  other  way  is  to  help  him  make  what  he  says  true. 

I  would  rather  do  what  I  can  to  help  Charles  Schwab 
practice  what  he  preaches  than  to  stop  his  preaching. 

Everything  turns  for  the  American  people  to-day  on 
being  constructive,  on  dealing  with  facts  as  they  are, 
on  using  the  men  we  have,  and  on  getting  the  most  out 
of  the  men  we  have. 

To  get  the  most  out  of  Charles  Schwab  throw  around 
him  expectation  and  malediction  and  then  let  him  take 
his  choice. 

Charles  Schwab  in  saying  what  he  says  about  the  new 
spirit  in  which  capital  has  got  to  deal  with  labor  is 
rendering  a  great,  unexpected,  sensational  and  indis- 
pensable service  to  labor  and  to  capital.  It  is  a  pity  to 
throw  this  public  confession  of  capital  to  labor,  and  in. 

85 


S6        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

behalf  of  labor  away.  It  \vould  be  a  still  greater  pity 
to  see  labor  itself  throwing  it  away. 

If  I  could  let  myself  be  cooped  up  as  a  writer  in  any 
one  class  in  this  country  to-day,  and  if  it  were  my  special 
business  to  take  sides  with  labor,  the  thing  I  would  try 
to  do  first  with  Charles  Schwab,  instead  of  undermining 
what  he  says  and  making  what  he  says  mean  nothing — 
•would  be  to  cooperate  with  him — back  him  up-  back  him 
up  with  the  public — back  him  up  with  the  stockholders 
and  the  people  in  his  mills,  until  he  makes  what  he  says 
mean  three  times  as  much. 

Then  I  would  see  to  it  if  I  could,  that  he  says  four 
times  as  much.  I  would  try,  if  I  could,  to  keep  Charles 
Schwab  steadily  at  it,  claiming  more  and  more  for  labor. 
Then  catching  up  more  and  more  to  Charles  Schwab, 
doing  more  and  more,  and  compelling  his  partners  to 
do  more  and  more  of  what  he  says. 

Charles  Schwab  has  fifty  or  a  hundred  thousand  or 
so  partners,  of  course — stockholders  he  has  to  educate. 

They  have  to  be  educated  in  public.  He  is  not  in- 
sincere because  he  has  not  educated  them  all  in  a  minute. 


GETTING   ONE   MAN  RIGHT 

nnHERE  are  certain  facts  which  make  me  believe  in 
A  Schwab  as  an  asset  for  the  nation  and  for  labor 
and  capital  both,  that  must  not  be  thrown  away.  There 
are  all  manner  of  facts  about  Schwab  and  his  mills 
which  I  do  not  yet  know  which  I  could  look  up  and 
use,  but  the  most  valuable  facts  to  use  and  use  first, 
are  facts  anybody  can  get  and  get  without  looking  up, 
by  just  sitting  down  and  thinking. 

Getting  one  man  right  and  being  fair  to  one  man  is 
the  way  to  begin  to  be  fair  to  a  nation. 

If  Charles  Schwab  is  what says  he  is,  if  Charles 

Schwab  is  doing  or  winking  while  it  is  being  done  at 

the  thing  says  he  is — he  is  an  incredibly  under- 

witted  man — stupid  about  the  public,  about  labor  and 
about  capital — and,  what  is  the  most  reckless  of  all — 
stupid  in  behalf  of  himself. 

It  is  rather  a  hard  nut  to  crack — Charles  Schwab's 
being  stupid.  I  cannot  understand  why  people — why 

a  man  like  would  apparently  rather  believe  that 

Charles  Schwab  is  stupid  than  to  believe  that  there  must 
be  some  other  way  of  explaining  him  and  of  explain- 
ing what  he  has  heard  said  about  him. 

If  what says  is  true  about  Mr.  Schwab,  he  is  not 

only  a  stupid  man  but  a  ruined  man. 

In  the  colossal  outbreak  of  public  knowledge  coming 

87 


88        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

to  us  now,  nothing  will  be  able  to  keep  Charles  Schwab 
from  to-morrow  on,  from  being  a  stupendous  tragedy 
as  long  as  he  lives,  and  a  by-word  after  he  is  dead. 

The  alternatives  are: 

The  assertions  about  Mr.  Schwab's  real  attitude 
toward  labor  are  not  true. 

If  true,  they  are  qualified  by  facts  and  by  delaying 
conditions  for  which  all  intelligent  men  whether  identi- 
fied with  capital  or  labor  would  be  glad  to  allow. 

If  true  they  are  due  to  delegated  authority. 

If  a  large  organization  does  not  hand  over  authority 
it  is  inefficient. 

If  it  does  not  make  experiments  with  men  and  meth- 
ods it  is  inefficient. 

If  it  does  not  make  a  certain  proportion  of  mistakes 
in  its  experiments  with  men  and  methods  its  experiments 
are  fake  experiments. 

People  who  do  things  soon  stop  being  harsh  in  judg- 
ing people  who  do  things. 


VI 

QETTIN€r  FIFTY  MEN  RIGHT 

MY  experience  is  that  extreme  reactionaries  and 
extreme  radicals  and  reformers  are  the  same  kind 
of  people  turned  around.  Take  any  extreme  radical  and 
begin  operating  him  other  end  to,  and  you  have  an  ex- 
treme conservative.  In  the  one  thing  that  determines 
what  a  man  amounts  to  and  what  a  man  does,  viz. :  his 
intuition  and  judgment  with  regard  to  human  nature, 
extreme  conservatives  and  extreme  reformers  are  a 
marked  people  and  make  and  have  the  habit  of  making 
singularly  stupid,  harsh  and  self-mutilating  judgments 
of  human  nature. "  They  are  always  getting  wrong  the 
cold  actual  facts  as  to  what  particular  people  mean — 
what  they  aje  like,  and  capable  of  being  like  and  are 
soon  going  to  show  they  are  like. 

The  quick  way  to  deal  with  the  industrial  situation  is 
to  expose  the  extreme  reactionaries  and  the  extreme 
radicals  who  have  created  it.  The  quick  way  to  do  this 
and  to  get  the  reactionaries  and  radicals  to  come  to 
terms  and  get  together,  scatfer  their  fear  and  their 
panic  about  one  another,  bone  down  to  team  work,  join 
with  the  rest  on  a  big  constructive  job  on  the  fate  of 
the  world,  is  to  pick  out  certain  strategic  human  beings 
in  business,  see  to  it  that  the  extremists  on  both  sides 
are  held  up  and  held  up  close  to  the  cold  scientific  facts 
about  what  these  human  beings  are,  and  what  they 

89 


90        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUbE 

mean,  and  what  they  are  driving  toward,  by  engineering 
experts  in  human  nature  and  in  interpreting  human 
nature. 

These  personalities  to  unlock  a  nation  with — to  make 
a  hundred  million  men  believe  together  and  act  together 
should  be  picked  out,  men  like  Charles  Schwab  every- 
body is  looking  at  and  men  not  looked  at  yet  everybody 
ought  to  look  at,  and  will  like  to  look  at  when  they 
know  them. 

Intensive  publicity  extensively  applied. 

Then  with  a  printing  press  and  a  postage  stamp  mul- 
tiply it  by  a  hundred  million.  Make  true  beliefs  about 
picked  out  men — typical  men  we  have  thousands  of 
duplicates  of,  the  daily  habit  of  people's  lives. 

If  the  American'  people  can  come  to  know  and  in- 
terpret fifty  men — if  they  can  get  fifty  sample  men 
right — they  will  then  be  able  to  use  these  fifty  men  every 
day  of  their  lives  as  keys  to  unlock  understanding  with, 
unlock  team  work  with,  with  all  the  others.  People  will 
have  something  to  work  from  and  something  to  work 
toward,  in  judging  what  they  can  do  with  employers 
and  with  workmen  around  them. 

Then  we  will  have  team  work  and  civilization — we 
will  have  a  democracy  the  Germans  would  like  to  be 
asked  to  belong  to. 


VII 


ENGINEERS   IN    FOLKS 

r  1 1  HE  most  gravely  important,  unbusinesslike  and 
A  unscientific  blunders  people  make  in  economics, 
are  their  judgments  of  facts  about  people.  The  other 
facts  than  the  facts  about  people — about  how  people 
feel  and  are  going  to  feel  inside,  are  comparatively  ac- 
curate and  obtainable.  Comparatively  ordinary  experts, 
or  experts  with  rather  routine  training  and  education 
can  deal  with  the  other  facts  than  the  facts  about  people. 
The  facts  about  labor,  capital  and  superproduction,  that 
we  fail  to  get  most,  are  the  psychological  facts  about  the 
way  people  are  judging  one  another. 

We  have  strikes  because  on  one  side  or  the  other,  or 
both,  people  are  off  on  their  facts  about  one  another. 
One  of  the  first  things  business  men  are  going  to  gen- 
erally arrange  for  is  to  have  these  facts  about  human 
nature,  like  all  other  engineering  facts  in  business,  dealt 
with  by  experts — by  the  general  recognition  and  em- 
ployment of  experts  in  human  nature — of  human  en- 
gineers, of  natural  and  trained  interpreters  of  men  to 
one  another. 

If  everybody  will  begin  dealing  to-morrow  morning 
with  people  as  they  really  are,  our  economics  in  America 
will  be  as  simple  as  a  primer,  before  night. 


91 


VIII 

THE  GREAT  NEW  PROFESSION 

En  Route,  New  York,  New  Haven  &  Hartford  R.  R. 

January  19,  1920. 

INED  at  the  's  last  night.     Judge was 

there.     Two  other  lawyers.    "We  sat  after  dinner 
and  talked  very  late. 

Three  lawyers  are  too  many  for  a  dinner. 

I  do  not  know  what  it  is,  but  I  never  spend  the  eve- 
ning with  a  lawyer,  without  talking  back  to  him  in  my 
mind  all  the.  next  day. 

Probably,  if  at  this  late  date  I  were  picking  out  what 
I  would  be  in  the  world,  and  had  to  be  one  thing  rather 
than  another,  I  would  pick  out  being  a  lawyer  back- 
wards. 

The  usual  standard  idea  of  what  a  lawyer  is,  is  that 
he  is  an  expert  in  conducting  people's  fights  for  them. 

My  idea  is  that  the  whole  thing  should  be  turned 
around  and  that  in  the  special  state  the  world  is  in 
just  now,  a  new  profession  should  at  once  be  started — 
a  profession  in  which  any  man  who  went  into  it,  would 
be  occupied  in  being  a  lawyer  backwards. 

(I  think  this  would  be  perhaps  the  best  way  to  put 
it  because  to  most  people,  being  a  lawyer  backwards  is 
inspiring  to  think  of — because  everybody  would  see — 
a  whole  nation  would  see  all  in  one  unanimous  minute, 

92 


THE  GREAT  NEW  PROFESSION  98 

just  what  the  new  profession  I  have  in  mind  would  be 
like.) 

Everybody  knows  about  lawyers.  They  are  always 
being  advertised  by  the  things  they  do  and  get  the  rest 
of  us  to  do.  The  most  conspicuous  ad. — their  huge  na- 
tional international  display  ad.  just  now  of  what  a 
lawyer  is  like — of  just  how  nice  being  a  lawyer  back- 
wards would  be,  is  the  United  States  Senate. 

It  would  be  the  most  alluring  spectacle  we  could  have 
in  America  to  most  people,  if  we  could  have  the  spectacle 
in  our  country  of  two  or  three  hundred  thousand  men 
being  lawyers  backwards — two  or  three  hundred  thou- 
sand men  stationed  strategically  in  ten  thousand  cities, 
as  experts  everybody  went  to,  to  keep  them  out  of  fights. 

You  see  a  man's  sign  up  over  his  door  and  you  go  in, 
and  pay  him  a  fee,  or  pay  him  so  much  a  year  for  mak- 
ing you  love  your  enemies.  And  of  course  he  will  change 
your  enemies  some  for  you  in  spots  so  that  you  can  put 
it  over.  Then  by  putting  in  a  little  touch  here  and 
there  on  you  perhaps,  it  is  not  impossible  he  will  make 
your  enemies  love  you. 

My  idea  is  that  this  idea  should  be  presented  to  people 
not  for  what  it  is  worth — not  as  a  high  moral  idea  or 
as  a  spiritual  luxury  but  as  a  plain  practical  every  day 
convenience  in  our  world  as  it  is,  for  getting  the  things 
done  one  wants  to  do,  and  for  getting  what  one  wants. 

If  I  were  hiring  a  man  to  help  me  get  what  I  want 
out  of  other  people  and  if  I  had  my  choice  between 
hiring  a  man  who  is  a  skilled  expert  in  making  people 
understand  me  and  hiring  a  man  who  is  a  skilled  expert 
in  making  people  afraid  of  me,  it  would  not  take  me 
long  to  say  which  would  be  the  more  practical  thing 
for  me  to  do. 


94        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

If  I  could  go  down  town  and  engage  a  man  at  so  much 
a  year  who  would  be  an  expert  in  making  me  understand 
myself  and  in  making  me  make  fun  of  myself,  so  that 
I  could  get  myself  into  fairly  good  shape  for  other 
people  to  understand,  it  would  be  still  more  practical. 

I  would  soon  find  myself  after  the  first  few  seances 
with  the  man  I  was  hiring  to  sit  down  with  me  and  be  a 
lawyer  backwards  to  me — I  would  soon  find  myself  hav- 
ing things  done  to  me  that  would  be  so  plain,  so  pointed, 
so  sensible,  so  scientific  and  matter  of  fact  and  thorough 
that  I  would  be  able  in  a  minute  to  cut  down  to  the 
quick  with  any  man  I  met, — cut  dowi.  to  the  quick  and 
get  what  I  wanted  on  any  subject  I  took  up,  because 
nobody  could  fool  me,  because  I  couldn't  even  be  fooled 
by  myself. 

I  do  not  know  how  long  it  is  going  to  take  but  I  do 
know  that  if  the  world  is  going  to  be  reformed  it  is 
going  to  be  by  men  who — either  by  doing  it  personally, 
or  by  hiring  somebody  else  to  help  them  do  it,  have 
reformed  themselves. 

My  own  personal  observation  is,  so  far,  that  when  I 
set  out  to  see  things  against  myself  I  seem  to  need 
somehow,  a  great  deal  of  assistance. 

In  such  a  naturally  disagreeable  mussy  job  of  course, 
instead  of  going  to  my  friends,  to  people  one  goes  out 
to  dine  with,  I  feel  there  ought  to  be  some  regular  pro- 
fessional person  one  could  go  to,  some  more  noble  re- 
fined sort  of  spiritual  hired  man — make  an  appoint- 
ment by  telephone,  go  down  to  a  room  down  town  on 
the  way  to  one's  office  and  then  just  as  a  plain  matter 
of  course  be  done  off  for  the  day,  be  done  over,  be 
put  in  shape  for  one's  fellow  human  beings  to  get  on 
with. 


THE  GREAT  NEW  PROFESSION  95 

Then  one  could  go  out  into  the  midst  of  the  people 
and  keel  over  a  world. 

After  one  had  hired  some  one  to  be  a  lawyer  backwards 
to  one  and  got  used  to  it,  one  would  soon  be  in  shape  to 
go  to  one's  employers  and  let  them  put  in  some  touches, 
go  to  one's  employees,  go  to  anybody  and  everybody 
right  and  left.  One  would  soon  get  so  that  one  could 
learn  something  from  everybody.  One  would  take  points 
even  from  relatives. 

The  main  difficulty  in  a  thing  like  this  would  be  one 
that  would  come  at  the  ktart,  the  difficulty  of  getting 
people  to  look  upon  undergoing  the  truth  about  them- 
selves, respectfully  and  seriously  and  like  an  opera- 
tion. 

No  amateur  or  friend  could  get  anybody  started.  The 
only  way  to  begin  is  to  have  some  special  expert  to  go 
to,  some  special  expert  with  a  long  string  of  notable 
moral  patients,  men  who  have  succeeded  in  business  by 
seeing  through  themselves  more,  and  seeing  through 
themselves  quicker  and  oftener  than  other  people  do. 
You  hear  of  some  especially  good  man  who  is  being  a 
lawyer  backwards  practicing  regularly  with  great  suc- 
cess. You  observe  his  patients  from  day  to  day  and 
see  how  the  truth  works.  Then  you  go  down  to  his 
office,  plank  down  your  money  and  get  the  truth. 


The  trouble  with  truth  from  friends  and  relatives  is 
that  even  when  they  tell  it,  nobody  pays  for  it.  Most 
people  neither  take  the  truth  nor  anything  else  in  this 
world  seriously  if  it  is  free.  People  get  more,  the  more 
they  want  it.  And  the  more  they  want  it,  the  more  they 
show  it  by  wanting  to  pay  for  it. 

This  is  why  I  suspect  that  being  a  lawyer  backwards 


96        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

will  have  to  be  a  regular  profession.  There  is  going  to 
be  a  tremendous  demand  for  going  down  town  and  get- 
ting a  disagreeable  truth,  the  moment  people  see  hovr 
going  down  and  getting  one  and  digesting  one  makes 
one  get  on  with  people  in  one's  work. 

The  lawyers  who  are  hired  to  fight  out  for  him,  a 
man's  lies  about  himself,  will  soon  be  crowded  out  of 
business  by  the  lawyers  who  free  a  man  from  himself, 
who  knock  a  man  out  from  a  kind  of  cramp  or  neuritis 
of  himself  and  present  him  a  world  with  the  truth. 

This  idea  should  be  presented  to  people  just  as  plain 
common  sense.  People  should  not  be  asked  to  take  it 
up  not  as  an  ideal  but  as  an  operation.  If  a  man  goes 
down  town  to  hire  a  doctor  to  tell  him  how  he  has  got 
to  eat  in  order  to  live,  why  should  he  not  go  down  town 
to  a  man's  office  and  hire  him  to  tell  him  what  he  has 
got  to  be  like  in  order  to  have  any  one  willing  to  let  him 
live? 

We  have  operations  on  all  our  other  inner  organs. 
The  things  that  are  done  to  us  at  these  times  are  usually 
to  say  the  least  intensely  personal  and  intimate  things. 
And  if  people  will  let  themselves  be  cut  open  and  oper- 
ated on  so  that  they  can  eat,  why  should  there  not  be 
men — hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  everywhere  in  of- 
fices, people  can  go  to  to  be  operated  on  so  that  they  can 
earn  something  to  eat?  Nine  out  of  ten  of  the  things 
that  keep  people  from  earning  a  living  as  they  should  or 
as  they  might,  are  truths  against  themselves  that  have 
never  been  operated  on. 


IX 

GETTING  PEOPLE  TO  NOTICE  FACTS 

first  thing  the  man  in  the  White  House  for  the 
A  next  four  years  is  going  to  have  to  face  is  the  prob- 
lem of  dealing  with  people  as  they  really  are. 

If  I  were  writing  a  book  for  the  next  president  to 
run  for  president  on,  one  of  the  first  things  I  would  put 
into  it  would  be  a  definite  statement  of  what  the  presi- 
dent and  the  government  proposed  to  do  and  what  policy 
they  proposed  to  adopt  to  keep  Labor  and  Capital  from 
being  off  on  their  facts  about  each  other. 

There  are  two  policies  to  choose  from. 

First  Policy:  Have  Capital  tell  Labor  what  is  the 
matter  with  Labor,  and  have  Labor  tell  Capital  what  is 
the  matter  with  Capital.  (Results:  Strikes  heaped  on 
lockouts  and  lockouts  heaped  on  strikes.) 

Second  Policy:  Turn  the  whole  truth-telling  policy 
around. 

The  way  to  make  a  truth  count  is  to  get  the  utmost 
possible  attention  to  it. 

The  way  to  get  the  utmost  possible  attention  to  a 
truth  is  to  have  people  one  does  not  expect  it  from  tell- 
ing it.  The  way  to  advertise  the  sins  of  Capital  is  to 
have  Capital  tell  them.  Employers  and  capitalists  can 
attract  twenty  times  as  much  attention  in  telling  things 
that  are  the  matter  with  them,  and  will  be  believed  forty 
times  as  much.  And  they  not  only  can  tell  the  facts 

97 


98        THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

against  themselves  more  fairly,  but  while  they  are  telling 
the  facts  against  themselves  they  are  in  a  position  to 
change  them.  They  can  tell  facts  against  themselves 
with  one  hand  and  change  them  with  the  other.  Or  they 
can  begin  changing  them — begin  getting  labor  to  help 
them  change  them. 

If  I  had  to  save  the  world  in  a  week  or  rather  get 
assurance  in  a  week  that  it  could  be  saved,  I  would  get 
all  the  people  in  it  to  agree  for  a  year  to  read  each 
other's  papers.  Have  every  man  read  two  papers.  "We 
would  start  up  for  America  the  national  Parallel  Column 
Habit.  Each  man  by  himself  daily  putting  his  own 
little  world  and  other  people 's  world  alongside  until  they 
got  used  to  it,  and  then  together. 

There  is  no  limit  to  what  reading  the  wrong  papers 
would  not  do  for  this  nation.  It  is  not  a  matter  to  argue 
about.  It  is  a  mere  plain  matter  of  fact  in  ordinary 
every  day  psychology.  The  veriest  tyro  in  human  en- 
gineering can  see  it, — that  the  way  to  get  a  truth  noticed 
about  Capital  or  Labor,  the  way  to  make  a  truth  of 
some  use  and  get  it  believed  and  acted  on,  is  to  have  the 
wrong  people  tell  it. 

Judge  Gary  could  say  some  of  the  things  Mr.  Gomp- 
ers  is  saying  a  great  deal  better  than  Mr.  Gompers  could. 

There  is  one  thing  I  am  going  to  do  when  I  put  this 
up  to  the  people.  I  am  not  going  to  let  them  think  I 
am  putting  it  up  to  them  as  a  Christian.  The  way  to 
introduce  the  idea  is  to  speak  as  a  plain  practical  engi- 
neer in  folks  and  in  the  way  human  nature  works.  I 
don't  know  as  I  would  mind  people  having  fine  reli- 
gious feelings  about  it,  when  they  did  it,  if  they  liked, 
but  I  would  prefer  to  call  it  and  prefer  to  introduce  it 
as  simple,  plain,  hard-headed  publicity. 


GETTING  PEOPLE  TO  NOTICE  FACTS      99 

The  most  natural  quick  universal  short-cut  to  peace, 
to  different  groups  of  people  in  America  getting  their 
facts  right  and  getting  them  quick  and  dealing  with 
each  other  as  they  really  are,  is  to  have  people  go  around 
in  America  from  now  on,  telling  truths  everywhere, 
who  have  just  got  them — people  the  truths  look  promi- 
nent on. 


THE  FOOL  KILLERS 

THE  gist  of  the  labor  problem  simmers  down  to  our 
.  making  some  adequate  universally  understood  pro- 
vision, generally  resorted  to  by  everybody  as  a  matter 
of  course,  for  people's  not  being  fooled  about  themselves. 

If  people  do  not  fool  themselves  nobody  else  can  fool 
them. 

And  they  do  not  go  around  fooling  others. 

The  next  thing  employers  and  employees  who  are 
being  fooled  by  themselves  and  who  are  trying  to  fool 
one  another,  are  going  to  observe,  is  that  their  competi- 
tors in  their  own  industry — the  employers  and  employees 
in  their  own  industry  who  are  not  fooled  by  themselves 
and  who  are  not  taking  time  to  fool  one  another,  are 
producing  more,  cheaper  and  better  goods  than  thej 
can. 

Things  that  take  years  to  straighten  out,  straighten 
out  in  weeks  when  people  on  both  sides  who  have  stopped 
fooling  themselves,  get  together  and  look  at  the  facts 
over  each  other's  shoulders.  All  that  is  necessary  is  to 
get  the  thing  started — looking  at  the  facts  over  each 
other's  shoulders.  People  who  do  not  want  to  start  to 
look  at  facts  in  this  way  should  call  in  a  specialist  until 
they  do. 

Labor  human  nature  is  not  one  kind  of  human  nature 
and  capital  human  nature  another.  They  both  beliere 

100 


THE  FOOL  KILLERS  101 

on  both  sides  what  they  want  to,  unless  they  go  to  a 
specialist  and  get  a  practical,  matter-of-fact,  profitable 
habit  started  of  making  a  deliberate,  desperate  effort 
not  to. 

The  world  is  not  being  run  from  day  to  day  by  the 
truth.  It  is  run  by  what  people  believe  is  the  truth. 
It  is  what  the  I.  W.  W.  extremists  believe  is  the  truth, 
which  constitutes  the  important  fact — the  fact  which 
has  to  be  looked  up,  considered  and  seriously  dealt  with. 
The  truth  about  Judge  Gary's  attitude  or  Charles 
Schwab's,  toward  labor  unions,  makes  no  difference  if 
nobody  believes  it,  or  if  the  labor  unions  don 't  believe  it. 
As  long  as  the  labor  unions  are  fooling  themselves  and 
believing  what  they  want  to  believe,  the  only  serious 
matter  of  fact  way  to  deal  with  them  is  to  consider  how 
they  manage  to  do  it.  The  fundamental  thing  that  is 
the  matter  with  people  is  that  they  are  off  on  their  facts 
about  themselves  and  believe  what  they  want  to  about 
themselves.  Naturally  having  begun  with  this  they 
branch  out  and  believe  what  they  want  to  about  anybody. 

To  this  end  in  our  present  industrial  deadlock,  the 
first  thing  we  have  obviously  got  to  make  provision  for 
in  modern  American  life,  is  practically  a  new  profes- 
sion— regular  professional  persons  everywhere  in  all 
cities,  and  in  all  the  different  industries  and  in  the 
highly  specialized  groups  each  with  their  special  and 
different  techniques,  who  are  experts  in  saving  people 
from  the  consequences  to  themselves  and  others  of  be- 
lieving what  they  want  to  about  themselves. 


XI 

THE    WHISPERERS 

AVERT  considerable  proportion  of  the  things  that 
labor  .unions  are  in  the  habit  of  saying  against 
their  employers,  the  employers  lock  their  office  doors  and 
sit  down  and  whisper  to  one  another  against  themselves. 

A  very  considerable  proportion  of  the  thing  that  em- 
ployers are  in  the  habit  of  saying  against  their  work- 
men, the  workmen  of  the  more  efficient  type  are  whisper- 
ing around  to  one  another  against  themselves. 

One  cannot  help  thinking  what  it  would  mean,  in  our 
present  industrial  deadlock,  if  the  people  who  are  whis- 
pering would  shout,  and  the  people  who  are  shouting 
would  shut  up. 

But  perhaps  it  does  not  matter  so  much  what  the 
shouters  shout. 

The  first  moment  the  shouters  suspect  what  the  whis- 
perers are  whispering, — the  whisperers  on  the  other  side 
— they  will  stop  shouting  to  listen. 

The  whole  industrial  situation  narrows  down  to  this, 
— might  be  put  into  two  words  by  a  hundred  million 
people  today,  to  Capital  and  Labor,  ' '  Swap  Whispers ! ' ' 

The  tumult  and  the  shouting  die. 

It  is  with  the  whisperers,  we  will  save  the  world. 


102 


XII 

MR.    DOOLEY,   JUDGE   GARY   AND   MR.    GOMPERS 

THE  proposal  that  we  have  a  new  profession — a 
group  of  specialists  to  go  to,  to  straighten  out  our 
souls  so  that  we  can  get  on  with  other  people  and  be  com- 
petent in  business,  comes  to  one's  mind  at  first  perhaps 
as  a  kind  of  good  humored,  whimsical  way  of  treating  a 
serious  and  almost  tragical  subject.  But  something  has 
made  me  want  to  begin  my  idea  in  this  way. 

In  strained  situations  between  people — situations  in 
which  one  sees  people  getting  all  worked  up  and  fine, 
noble  and  wild-eyed  about  themselves,  I  am  not  so 
sure  but  that  the  best,  most  pointed,  most  immediate 
and  thorough  thing  that  can  be  done,  is  for  some  one — 
some  one  who  feels  like  it,  to  start  up  a  little,  mild,  good- 
natured  and  careless  laugh. 

To  start  up  something  careless  even  for  a  minute, 
whether  it  laughed  or  not,  would  be  practical. 

Mr.  Dooley  in  our  present  tightened  up  hysterical 
situation  between  Capital  and  Labor,  could  really  do 
more  than  Savonarola. 

And  Life  could  do  more  than  the  Christian  Register. 
It  was  not  frivolous  in  Abraham  Lincoln  in  the  deepest 
and  most  tragic  hour  this  nation  ever  had,  to  try  to 
make  way  with  his  Cabinet,  for  his  Emancipation  Proc- 
lamation, by  introducing  it  with  Artemus  Ward.  It 
was  the  pathetic  humanness,  the  profound  statesmanship 

103 


104      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

of  the  loneliest  man  of  his  time,  in  the  loneliest  moment 
of  his  life  smiling  his  way  through  to  his  God. 

I  am  not  sure  but  that  if  Peter  Finley  Dunne  could 
have  been  appointed  on  the  President's  Industrial  Con- 
ference and  could  have  got  off  some  nice  cosy  relaxed 
human  little  joke  just  in  the  nick  of  time — just  as  Mr. 
Gompers  and  his  Labor  Children  like  so  many  dear  little 
girls  said  they  would  not  play  any  more,  took  their 
dollies  and  their  dishes  and  went  home — stuck  their 
heads  up  and  majestically  walked  from  the  room — if 
Mr.  Dooley  and  Hennessy  could  have  been  present  and 
got  in  a  small  deep  lighthearted  human  word,  all  in  one 
half  minute  the  President's  Conference  might  have  been 
saved. 

The  broad  every  day  human  fact  about  the  Conference 
was,  that  seen  from  the  point  of  view  of  God  or  of 
common  people,  many  of  the  men  in  it, — most  •  of  the 
men  in  it,  for  the  time  being,  were  really  being  very 
funny  and  childish  about  themselves.  So  far  as  the 
public  could  see  through  the  windows,  the  only  real 
grown-ups  in  the  Conference  who  conducted  themselves 
with  dignity,  with  serenity,  with  some  sense  of  fact 
about  human  nature  and  humor,  some  sense  of  how  the 
Conference  would  look  in  a  week,  were  the  men  in  The 
Public  Group.  There  were  doubtless  lively  and  equally 
disconcerning  individuals  in  the  Capital  group  and  the 
Labor  group,  but  they  were  voted  down  and  hushed  up, 
and  not  allowed  to  look  to  the  public  outside,  any  more 
like  intelligent  fellow  human  beings  than  could  be 
helped. 

The  President's  Conference,  at  that  particular  mo- 
ment, like  our  whole  nation  today,  had  worked  itself  up 
into  a  state  of  spiritual  cramp — a  state  in  which  it  did 


DOOLEY,  JUDGE  GARY  AND  GOMPERS   105 

not  and  could  not  make  any  difference  what  anybody 
thought,  and  nobody  had  the  presence  of  mind  at  the 
moment  apparently,  or  the  willfulness  of  love  for  his 
kind,  or  the  quickness  to  do  what  Lincoln  would  have 
done,  slip  in  a  warm  homely  joke  that  would  have  got 
people  started  laughing  at  one  another  until  they  got 
caught  laughing  at  themselves. 

When  Mr.  Gompers  and  the  labor  people  with  tragic 
and  solemn  dignity,  as  if  they  were  making  history  and 
as  if  a  thousand  years  were  looking  on,  walked  out  of  the 
room,  I  do  not  claim  that  if  they  had  met  Oliver  Herford 
or  Mr.  Dooley  in  the  hall,  they  would  have  come  back, 
but  I  do  claim  that  if  some  one  just  beforehand  had 
made  a  mild  kindly  remark  recalling  people  to  a  sense 
of  humor  and  to  a  sense  of  fact,  Mr.  Gompers  and  the 
labor  group  would  have  found  it  impossible  to  be  so 
romantic  and  grand  and  tragic  about  themselves,  they 
would  have  seen  that  the  ages  were  not  noticing  them, 
that  they  were  off  on  their  facts,  that  they  were  not 
making  history  at  all,  or  that  the  history  they  were 
making  would  all  have  to  be  made  over  in  a  week.  They 
had  the  facts  wrong  about  the  capital  group,  and  wrong 
about  the  public  group,  and  like  dear  little  girls  were 
believing  in  their  dear  little  minds  what  they  thought 
was  prettiest,  about  themselves. 

Of  course  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Capital,  while  it 
did  not  do  anything  so  grand,  was  probably  responsible 
for  the  grandeur  of  Labor's  emotions  and  actions,  and 
was  equally  believing  what  it  wanted  to  believe  about 
itself. 

With  Capital  not  yet  grown  up — not  yet  really  capable 
(as  the  really  mature  have  to  be  in  the  rough  and 
tumble  of  life)  of  making  a  creative  use  of  criticism, — 


106      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

incapable  of  self-confession,  self-discipline  and  of  mak- 
ing fun  of  itself,  it  naturally  follows  that  with  Labor 
in  the  same  undeveloped  state,  the  President's  Confer- 
ence was  mainly  valuable  as  a  national  dramatization, — 
a  rather  loud  and  theatrical  acting  out  before  an  amazed 
people  of  the  fact  that  Capital  and  Labor  in  this  coun- 
try as  institutions  were  as  petulant,  as  incapable,  as  full 
of  fear,  superstitions  and  childishness  about  one  another 
as  the  monotonous  strikes  and  lockouts  they  have  dumped 
on  us,  and  made  us  pay  for  forty  years,  had  made  us 
suspect  they  were! 

For  forty  years  Capital  and  Labor  have  taken  out  all 
the  things  that  bothered  them,  their  laziness  in  under- 
standing one  another,  their  moral  garbage,  their  moral 
clinkers,  tin  cans  and  ashes,  and  dumped  them  in  what 
seems  to  them  apparently  to  be  a  great  backyard  on  this 
nation — called  The  Public.  And  we  have  carted  it  all 
away  and  paid  for  carting  it  away  without  saying  a 
•word. 

There  are  three  courses  we  can  take  in  the  Public 
Group  now. 

We  can  try  to  discipline  Capital  and  Labor  into  pro- 
ducing together  by  passing  laws  and  heaping  up  em- 
barrassments and  penalties. 

We  can  let  them  see  how  much  better  they  can  make 
things  by  sticking  them  on  to  one  another  and  letting 
them  discipline  one  another. 

We  can  make  fun  of  both  of  them  quietly  to  them- 
selves, keep  quiet-hearted,  matter  of  fact,  full  of  realism, 
humor,  relaxation  and  naturalness  and  deal  with  Capi- 
tal and  Labor  as  Lincoln  would,  by  getting  laughing 
and  listening  started. 

Then  let  them  laugh  at  themselves. 


DOOLEY,  JUDGE  GARY  AND  GOMPERS   107 

America  should  arrange  to  have  Judge  Gary,  Mr. 
Dooley  and  Mr.  Gompers  get  together  on  a  desert  island 
and  face  things  out. 

A  great  deal  of  capital  in  this  country — especially  the 
best  of  it,  is  already  seeing,  and  already  acting  on  facts 
about  itself  it  has  not  wanted  to  believe.  It  is  already 
seeing  that  it  cannot  carry  off  with  Labor  or  with  the 
Public  any  longer  the  idea  of  looking  pure  and  noble, 
standing  before  people  in  a  kind  of  eternal  moral-Prince- 
Albert  coat,  one's  hand  in  one's  bosom,  and  with  the 
same  old  pompous-looking  face,  without  looking  ridicu- 
lous. It  is  seeing  that  it  would  rather  laugh  at  itself, 
in  a  pinch,  than  to  have  other  people  laughing  at  it, 
that  the  only  thing  left  to  it  to  do  now  is  to  get  serious, 
scientific  and  economic,  smile  at  its  airs  with  Labor  and 
the  public,  and  lay  them  aside. 

If  Capital  sees  how  it  really  looks,  laughs  at  itself, 
goes  in  quietly  for  self-criticism,  self-confession  and 
self-discipline,  Labor  will. 

If  Labor  does  it,  Capital  will. 

Whichever  side  does  it  first,  and  does  it  best, — does 
it  in  the  most  human,  attractive  and  contagious  way  will 
find  a  hundred  million  people  handing  over  to  it  the 
power  and  the  leadership  of  the  country. 

To  whichever  side  it  comes  first,  to  show  the  most 
shrewdness,  the  most  fearlessness,  the  most  generosity 
in  seeing  facts  against  itself,  will  come  the  honor  of  the 
first  victory. 

The  first  victory  either  side  will  be  allowed  by  the 
people,  is  its  victory  over  itself. 

People  in  this  country  who  are  not  fooled  by  them- 
selves, who  are  capable  of  self-criticism,  self-confession 
and  self-discipline,  can  have  anything  they  want. 


XIII 

FOOLING  ONESELF  IN   POLITICS 

THE  same  thing  that  everybody  can  see  is  going  to 
happen  in  business  in  this  country  from  now  on — 
the  pushing  forward — the  victory  over  all  others  in 
business  of  the  men  who  are  not  fooled  about  themselves 
is  going  to  be  seen  happening  ten  times  over  in  politics. 

The  leading  symptom  of  the  mood  of  the  people,  the 
magnificent  blanket  political  secret  that  covers  all  the 
other  secrets  of  the  coming  conventions  and  elections, 
the  dominating  fact  of  the  next  man's  next  four  years 
in  The  White  House,  is  the  thing  that  is  going  to  be 
done  by  the  people  from  to-day  on,  to  politicians  who 
are  fooled  about  themselves. 

One  has  but  to  mention  one  or  two  and  a  nation  sees 
it. 

Any  little  natural  impression  my  fellow  citizens  may 
have  had  at  the  beginning  of  this  article  that  in  putting 
forward  my  idea  of  being  a  lawyer  backwards,  or  the 
idea  that  we  must  all  practice  at  being  lawyers  back- 
wards to  ourselves,  I  am  putting  forward  just  a  gay 
pleasant  thoughtlet,  instead  of  a  grave  and  pressing 
national  issue,  an  issue  on  which  the  fate  of  a  people 
is  at  stake,  fades  away  when  one  really  begins  to  think 
of  how  the  idea  would  really  work  out  if  tried  on  par- 
ticular politicians. 

Everybody  can  pick  out  his  own  of  course,  but  I  am 

108 


FOOLING  ONESELF  IN  POLITICS          109 

inclined  to  believe  just  at  the  moment,  that  if  there  was 
<  a  good  man  everybody  in  this  nation  knew  of  who  was 
being  a  lawyer  backwards — say  in  New  York  or  London 
— a  man  who  had  a  big  practice  and  who  had  a  fine 
record  in  bracing  men  up  to  fight  themselves  and  not  to 
be  fooled  about  themselves,  the  man  that  most  people 
in  this  country  would  like  to  take  up  a  national  collec- 
tion for,  have  sent  to  him  and  done  over  at  once,  no 
matter  what  it  cost,  would  be  Henry  Cabot  Lodge. 

For  six  long  weary  months  now,  the  main  and  inter- 
national fact  America  and  the  world  have  had  to  get 
up  and  face  every  morning  is  the  way  a  man  called 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge  is  being  fooled  by  himself. 

Ninety-nine  million  out  of  a  hundred  million  people 
can  see, — their  very  cats  and  dogs  can  see,  and  the  little 
birds  in  the  trees  in  Washington  can  see,  that  the  main 
particular  uncontrollable  force  that  grips  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge  in  a  vise  all  day  every  day  for  six  months  is  his 
desire  to  make  Woodrow  Wilson  ridiculous,  to  set  Wood- 
row  Wilson  down  hard  in  a  lonely  back  seat  of  the 
World. 

But  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  does  not  see  what  the  cats  and 
dogs  of  a  hundred  million  people  and  the  little  birds  in 
the  trees  see  about  Henry  Cabot  Lodge.  He  does  not 
see  what  it  means  about  himself,  that  he  trembles  like 
an  aspen  leaf  from  soul  to  stern  when  the  thought  of 
Wilson  crosses  his  pale  mind,  that  he  has  to  go  to  bed 
for  an  hour  after  anybody  mentions  Wilson's  name  to 
him,  and  that  all  that  has  really  happened  to  him  or  to 
the  world  after  all  is  that  he — Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  of 
Massachusetts,  has  taken  the  one  single  elemental 
dammed  up  (and  not  unnatural)  desire  to  sit  Woodrow 
Wilson  down  hard  and  made  a  great  national  and  in- 


110      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  "HOUSE 

ternational  emotion  out  of  it — every  day  one  more  morn- 
ing he  gets  out  of  bed,  elevates  his  own  private  emotion 
into  a  transfiguration — into  a  great  national  stained- 
glass  window  for  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  sees  twenty  gen- 
erations like  attendant  angels  hovering  around  him — 
around  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  in  the  Window,  like  Saint 
George  with  the  dragon,  blessing  him  for  saving  Colum- 
bia from  being  crunched  in  the  wandering  fire-breathing 
jaws  of  a  prowling  League  of  Nations ! 

It  is  the  most  stupendous  spectacle  in  the  most  stu- 
pendous and  public  moment  of  the  world,  of  sheer  ro- 
manticism and  sentimentality,  of  one  single  man  with 
God  and  forty  nations  looking  on,  prinking  his  soul 
before  the  twisted  mirror  of  himself  that  could  be  con- 
ceived. 

It  would  be  of  no  use  to  argue — not  even  for  a  hun- 
dred million  people  to  argue  with  Henry  Cabot  Lodge, 
because  what  they  would  really  have  to  do  to  argue  to 
the  point  would  be  not  to  argue  about  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge's  idea  about  the  subject,  but  about  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge's  idea  of  himself. 

So  it  came  to  pass — a  nation  confronted  with  a  man 
whom  none  can  stop,  a  man  who  believes  what  he  wants 
to  believe  about  himself,  a  man  magnificently  obsessed — 
a  man  holding  himself  ready  any  minute  of  any  day  in 
the  year,  following  the  bogey  of  his  wraith  of  Wilson  to 
the  precipice  of  the  end  of  the  world,  with  forty  na- 
tions in  his  pocket,  jumps  off.  .  .  . 

Who  would  have  believed  that  a  man  who  was  writing 
history,  who  was  measuring  off  calm  perspectives  of 
things  to  happen,  and  little  leagues  of  nations  of  his 
own  twenty  years  ago — who  would  have  believed  that  a 
man  with  a  proud,  controlled  and  cultivated  mind  could 


FOOLING  ONESELF  IN 'POLITICS          111 

let  his  mind  in  this  way  be  seized  from  the  sub-cellar 
of  its  own  passions  and  its  own  desires,  and  at  the  ex- 
pense of  his  party,  to  the  humiliation  of  his  nation  and 
the  weariness  of  the  world,  let  itself  be  warped  into  a 
national,  into  an  international  helplessness  like  this! 

My  own  feeling  is  that  the  best  possible  use  of  Henry 
Cabot  Lodge  at  the  present  moment  is  as  a  national 
symptom,  as  a  lesson  in  the  psycho-analysis  of  nations, 
a  suggestion  of  what  nations  that  want  to  get  things, 
must  look  out  for  and  from,  be  on  the  lookout  for  next, 
and  from  now  on,  in  the  men  they  choose  to  get  them. 

The  ways  in  which  great  employers  and  labor  unions 
are  being  fooled  about  themselves  at  the  expense  of  all 
of  us,  in  the  industrial  world,  are  matched  on  every  side 
in  the  world  of  politics. 

The  personal  trait  of  great  political  as  well  as  in- 
dustrial value  for  Avhich  the  people  of  this  country  are 
going  to  look  in  the  men  they  allow  to  be  placed  over 
them — the  men  they  give  power  and  command  to,  is  the 
quality  in  a  man  of  being  sensitive  about  facts,  especially 
facts  in  people.  "What  we  are  going  to  look  for  in  a 
man  is  having  an  engineering  and  not  a  sentimental  at- 
titude toward  his  own  mind  and  the  minds  of  others. 
We  are  going  to  give  power  and  place  to  the  man  who 
has  a  certain  eagerness  for  a  fact  whatever  it  does  to 
him,  who  has  a  certain  suppleness  of  mind  in  not  be- 
lieving what  he  wants  to.  The  man  we  are  going  to 
look  past  everybody  for  and  pick  to  be  a  President  or  a 
Senator  after  this,  is  the  man  who  is  not  hoodwinked 
or  polarized  by  his  own  party  or  by  his  own  class,  who 
is  not  fooled  about  himself,  who  keeps  without  swerving, 
because  he  likes  it  and  prefers  it,  to  the  main  trunk  line 
of  the  interests  of  all  of  us. 


XIV 

SWEARING   OFF    FBOM   ONESELF   IN   TIME 

BEFORE  the  new  profession  of  being  a  lawyer  back- 
wards is  established,  and  before  very  many  offices 
have  really  been  opened  up  where  one  can  go  in  and 
have  one's  mind  changed  ten  dollars'  worth  instead  of 
having  it  poored,  soothed  and  petted,  a  good  many  of 
us  are  going  to  find  it  necessary  to  practice  on  ourselves 
and  in  a  humble  way  as  amateurs,  do  any  little  odd  jobs 
we  can  on  ourselves  at  home. 

"We  nearly  all  of  us  have  it  in  us — we  the  hundred 
million  people — to  be  like  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  on  a  less 
national  scale,  any  minute. 

I  say  over  to  myself  breathlessly  between  these  very 
words  while  I  write  them  down  about  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge,  that  beautiful  thought  John  Bunyan  had,  "Ex- 
cept for  the  grace  of  God"  a  wife,  five  friends  and  a 
sense  of  humor,  there  goes  Gerald  Stanley  Lee ! 

I  have  made  myself  say  this  over  practically  every 
day  while  writing  this  article  (I  have  had  to  write  it), 
and  when  I  was  in  the  same  town  Henry  Cabot  Lodge 
is,  last  week,  saw  him  snooping  around  the  Senate,  so 
pure  and  high  and  from  the  Back  Bay,  so  serene  in  his 
courtly  chivalrous  dream  about  himself,  I  got  taken  up 
every  time — I  do  not  deny  it — on  the  same  monotonous 
big  beautiful  wave  of  feeling  superior  followed  by  the 
same  monotonous  sweeping,  sinking  undertow  of  humble- 

112 


SWEARING  OFF  FROM  ONESELF  IN  TIME     113 

ness,  and  then  I  would  stand  there  (He  is  my  own  Sen- 
ator) with  his  pass  for  The  Senate  in  my  pocket  ...  I 
would  stand  and  watch  him, — watch  him  walking 
through  the  lordly  corridors  quoting  over  to  myself 
that  same  beautiful  thought  John  Bunyan  had  about  the 
murderer,  "Except  for  the  grace  of  God  there  goes  etc., 
etc."  Everybody  fill  in  for  himself! 

The  essential  fact  in  any  fundamental  workable  truth 
about  human  nature  is  that  all  the  people  who  have  any 
are  very  much  alike.  The  best  we  can  do  about  it — 
most  of  us — is  to  recognize  the  fact  that  in  spite  of  the 
thought  of  the  people  it  mixes  us  up  with,  the  best  of 
us  probably  are  going  to  be  fooled  about  ourselves,  and 
that  the  only  practical  working  difference  between  us 
in  the  end  is  that  some  of  us  have  caught  ourselves  in 
the  act  more  often  than  others,  have  wrought  out  a 
livelier,  more  desperate  self-consciousness,  anjd  have 
made  rather  elaborate  and  regular  arrangements,  per- 
haps,— when  something  in  us  starts  us  up  into  being 
Lodges, — for  catching  up  to  ourselves  and  for  swearing 
off  from  ourselves  in  time. 

Here  is  Charles  Evans  Hughes  for  instance,  who  from 
the  day  he  was  born  hates  a  Socialist  from  afar  off, — 
a  man  who  never  had  in  his  younger  days  perhaps,  like 
some  of  us,  a  streak  of  being  one,  and  yet  the  first  thing 
Charles  Evans  Hughes  does  before  anybody  can  say  Jack 
Robinson,  the  very  first  minute  he  reads  in  his  paper 
that  the  New  York  Assembly  has  refused  to  give  their 
seats  to  five  Socialist  members  because  they  are  Social- 
ists, is  to  be  a  lawyer  backwards  to  himself,  with  a  big 
national  jerk  draw  his  national  self  together,  and  before 
the  country  is  half  waked  up  at  breakfast  the  next  morn- 
ing, we  hare  the  spectacle  of  an  act  of  sympathy  and 


114      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

protest  on  behalf  of  American  Socialists  from  the  last 
man  most  people  would  think  it  of,  an  open  letter  in- 
sisting that  the  narrow  partisans  of  the  Assembly  itch- 
ing with  superiority,  sweating  with  propriety,  sitting  in 
a  kind  of  ooze  of  patriotism  in  their  great  Chamber  in 
Albany,  should  take  the  Socialist  members  they  had 
waved  out  of  the  room  simply  for  belonging  to  the  So- 
cialist party,  and  conduct  them  back  to  their  seats  as 
the  accredited  representatives  (until  proved  individually 
unfit)  of  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  let  them  sit 
there  as  a  national  exhibit  of  the  way  in  which  a  great 
and  free  people,  who  are  believing  in  themselves  every 
day,  can  believe  in  themselves  enough  to  listen  to  any- 
body, to  make  regular  arrangements  in  Albany  and 
everywhere  as  a  matter  of  course  for  listening  to  people 
with  whom  they  do  not  agree,  without  fear  and  without 
frothing  at  the  mouth. 

Mr.  Hughes  is  as  anxious  to  do  anything  he  can  dur- 
ing one  lifetime  to  discourage  Socialism  as  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge  is  to  discourage  Woodrow  Wilson,  but  the  reason 
that  the  American  people  have  been  glad  to  have 
Charles  Evans  Hughes  as  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
the  reason  that  they  came  within  three  inches  of  mak- 
ing him  President  of  the  United  States  is  that  in  an 
eminent  degree  he  is  a  man  who  has  made  elaborate, 
conclusive  and  habitual  arrangements  with  his  own  mind 
for  not  being  deceived  by  Charles  Evans  Hughes,  for 
being  a  lawyer  backwards,  for  fighting  himself,  for 
stepping  up  out  of  being  a  mere  lawyer  and  sitting 
sternly  on  the  Bench  of  the  Supreme  Court,  against 
himself. 

Of  course  I  am  not  writing  this  article  to  point  out 
to  a  hundred  million  people  with  this  fountain  pen  of 


SWEARING  OFF  FROM  ONESELF  IN  TIME     115 

mine  dripping  in  its  sins,  how  superior  I  and  a  hundred 
million  other  people  are  to  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  and  to 
the  way  for  the  last  six  months  he  is  mooning  about  in 
his  mind  and  being  internationally  fooled  about  him- 
self. The  special  point  I  seek  to  make  is  that  as  we  are 
all  in  danger  on  one  subject  or  another,  of  breaking  out 
into  millions  of  Lodges  any  minute,  that  we  should 
make  the  most  of  our  new  national  chance  of  our  power 
as  a  people  just  now — just  before  the  two  great  national 
conventions  of  the  parties  to  which  we  mostly  belong, 
to  make  deliberate  and  national  arrangements  to  be  on 
our  guard  against  ourselves,  to  see  to  it  that  we  nomi- 
nate and  elect  to  The  White  House, — from  whatever 
walk  of  life  he  comes, — a  man  who  will  have  himself 
magnificently  in  hand,  a  man  who  will  not  trickle  off 
before  the  people  into  his  own  private  temperament, 
pocket  himself  up  in  his  own  class,  or  put  down  the  lid 
of  his  own  party  gently  but  firmly  over  hjs  soul — a  man 
who  will  be  the  President  of  all  the  people  everywhere 
all  the  time. 

When  the  members  of  The  Bar  Association  of  the 
City  of  New  York  who  backed  Mr.  Hughes,  were  pre- 
senting to  the  world,  our  slowly  enlightened  world,  the 
spectacle  of  several  hundred  lawyers  rising  to  the  oc- 
casion and  being  lawyers  backwards  to  themselves,  it 
probably  would  not  be  fair  to  divide  off  crudely  the 
sheep  from  the  goats,  and  to  say  that  those  who  voted  to 
back  Mr.  Hughes  were,  and  those  who  did  not,  were  not 
equally  exposed  to  being  fooled  about  themselves.  Mr. 
Hughes  and  his  followers  were  probably  men  who  are 
more  on  their  guard,  who  have  regular  and  standing  ar- 
rangements with  themselves  against  themselves  and  who 
acted  more  quickly  than  others  in  this  case  in  the  way 


116      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

they  should  wish  they  had  acted  in  three  weeks,  three 
years  or  three  lifetimes. 

In  the  extraordinary  struggle  our  nation  is  now  mak- 
ing in  the  next  four  years  to  justify  democracy — to  jus- 
tify the  power  of  the  human  spirit  to  be  free,  generous, 
noble  and  just  in  self-government,  the  power  of  men 
of  differing  classes,  of  differing  groups  and  interests  to 
live  in  orderly  good  will  and  mutual  understanding  to- 
gether, until  we  make  at  last  a  great  nation  together  in 
the  sight  of  nations  that  say  we  cannot  do  it, — all  this 
is  going  to  turn  for  this  country,  not  upon  our  not 
being  a  blind  people,  or  on  our  not  being  a  prejudiced 
people,  or  upon  our  not  being  full  of  the  liability  to  be 
deceived  about  ourselves,  but  on  what  we  do  about  it 
when  we  are,  upon  our  making  arrangements  beforehand 
for  seeing  through  ourselves  in  time,  upon  our  putting 
forward  men  to  represent  us  who  shall  not  be  dema- 
gogues, who  shall  lead  us  as  we  are,  with  clear  eyes  to 
what  we  are  going  to  be,  men  who  shall  lead  us  by 
opening  our  imaginations  by  touching,  or  our  vision  in- 
stead of  petting  us  in  our  sins. 


XV 

TECHNIQUE  FOR   NOT   BEING   FOOLED  BY   ONBSBLF 

THE  next  twenty-eight  pages  of  this  book  might  be 
entitled :  ' '  An  Article  that  Expected  to  Appear  in 
the  Saturday  Evening  Post." 

When  the  twenty-eight  pages,  which  had  been  con- 
ceived and  written  to  be  read  in  this  way,  were  com- 
pleted, they  were  too  late  to  submit  to  the  Post,  and  too 
late  to  change. 

The  reader  is  therefore  requested  to  bear  in  mind 
(as  I  do)  that  he  is  getting  the  next  eleven  chapters 
for  nothing — that  they  have  not  been  paid  for  and  it 
can  only  be  left  to  people's  imaginations  whether  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post  would  approve  or  believe  what 
I  believe,  or  feel  hurt  if  other  people  believe  it. 


The  suggestion  that  before  the  new  profession  of 
being  a  lawyer  backwards  is  started  we  shall  all 
try  in  the  present  crisis  of  the  nation,  doing  what  we 
can  as  amateurs,  putting  in  at  once  any  little  odd  jobs 
of  criticism  on  ourselves  which  may  come  our  way,  brings 
up  the  whole  matter  of  an  amateur  technique  for  not 
being  fooled  by  oneself. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  talk  pleasantly  about  a  man's 
power  of  self-criticism  or  of  self-discipline  as  the  source 
of  ideas,  as  a  secret  of  increased  production  in  factories, 
or  power  over  others  in  business,  and  as  a  general  rule 

117 


118      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

for  success  whether  in  trade  or  in  statesmanship,  I  say 
it  is,  but  what  is  there  anybody  can  really  do  after  all 
about  having  or  exercising  this  power  of  self-criticism? 

If  the  readers  of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  were  to 
come  to  me  in  a  body  in  this  part  of  my  book  and  ask 
me  what  there  is,  if  anything,  they — the  readers  of  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post  can  do,  and  do  now  to  acquire 
a  technique — a  kind  of  general  amateur  technique  for 
not  being  fooled  about  themselves,  I  am  afraid  I  would 
have  a  hard  time  in  holding  back  from  giving  good  ad- 
vice. Even  at  this  moment  without  being  asked  at  all, 
I  have  a  faint  hopeful  idea — I  feel  it  at  this  moment 
floating  about  my  head — a  kind  of  nimbus  of  wanting 
to  tell  other  people  what  they  ought  to  do  about  not  being 
fooled  by  themselves.  But  I  have  ripped  the  Thing  off. 
I  cannot  believe  that  only  this  far — in  a  few  pages  or 
so  about  it,  I  have  made  people's  not  being  fooled  by 
themselves  alluring  enough  to  them.  It  has  occurred 
to  me  that  perhaps  if  I  want  to  have  people  in  this  coun- 
try really  allured  by  the  prospect  of  not  being  fooled 
by  themselves,  the  best  thing  for  me  to  do  is  to  pick  out 
some  man  in  the  country  everybody  knows  who  is  es- 
pecially lacking  in  a  technique  for  not  being  fooled  by 
himself — some  one  man  all  our  people  have  a  perfect 
passion, — almost  an  epidemic  of  not  wanting  to  be  like, 
and  try  to  make  my  idea  alluring  with  him. 

Naturally  of  course  I  have  picked  out  Mr.  Albert 
Sidney  Burleson  of  Austin,  Texas,  Postmaster  Imper- 
turbable of  The  United  States. 

It  is  true  that  other  readers  of  the  Saturday  Evening 
Post  besides  Mr.  Burleson  might  have  been  picked  out. 
But  everybody  knows  Mr.  Burleson.  Everybody  writes 
letters.  Mr.  Burleson  is  the  great  daily  common  inti- 


TECHNIQUE  FOB  NOT  BEING  FOOLED       119 

mate  personal  experience  of  a  hundred  million  people. 
Everybody  who  puts  letters  into  Mr.  Burleson  *s  Post 
Office — everybody  who  waits  for  his  letters  to  get  to  him 
after  Mr.  Burleson  is  through  with  them,  must  feel  as 
I  do,  that  Mr.  Albert  Sidney  Burleson  of  Austin,  Texas, 
as  a  kind  of  national  pointer  to  this  nation  of  things 
that  other  people  do  not  want  to  have  the  matter  with 
them,  could  hardly  be  excelled. 

I  am  using  Mr.  Burleson  gratefully  for  a  few  moments 
as  an  example  of  three  things  of  personal  importance  to 
all  amateurs  interested  in  the  technique  of  self-criticism. 

1st.  What  Mr.  Burleson  could  get  out  of  criticizing 
himself. 

2nd.  What  Mr.  Burleson  could  get  out  of  letting  other 
people  criticize  him. 

3rd.  How  he  could  get  it.    Technique  and  illustration. 


XVI 


THE   AUTOBIOGRAPHY    OF   A   LETTER 

IP  the  autobiography  of  a  letter  trying  to  work  its  way 
through  from  Philadelphia  to  Northampton,  Massa- 
chusetts, could  be  written  down — if  all  the  details  of 
just  what  happened  to  it  slumped  into  corners  on  plat- 
forms— what  happened  to  it  in  slides,  in  slots  and  pigeon- 
holes, in  mail  bags  on  noisy  city  sidewalks,  in  freight  cars 
on  awful  silent  sidings  in  the  night,  in  depots,  in  junc- 
tions— if  all  the  long  story  of  this  one  letter  could  be 
written  like  the  Lord's  Prayer  on  a  thumb  nail  and 
could  be  put  in  that  little  hole  of  information  stamped 
on  the  envelope — what  is  it  that  the  little  autobiography 
of  the  letter  would  do  to  Albert  Sidney  Burleson? 

The  autobiography  of  one  letter  put  with  millions  of 
others  like  it  every  day,  put  with  flocks  of  letters  from 
along  the  Ohio,  from  along  the  Mississippi,  from  the 
Grand  Canyon,  the  Tombigbee  and  the  Maumee,  wav- 
ing their  autobiographies  across  a  nation  from  Maine  to 
California,  would  point  to  Albert  Sidney  Burleson  and 
with  one  great  single  wave  of  unanimity  all  in  a  day, 
would  put  him  out  of  his  office  in  Washington  by  ten- 
thirty  A.  M.,  start  him  off  from  the  station  by  his  own 
rural  parcel  post  to  Austin,  Texas,  before  night. 

I  say  by  rural  parcel  post  because  he  would  probably 
arrive  there  quicker  than  if  he  were  sent  like  a  mere 
letter. 

120 


THE  AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  A  LETTER       121 

Why  is  it  that  if  one  were  trying  to  think  up  some 
way  in  these  present  quarrelsome  days,  of  making  a  hun- 
dred million  people  all  cheerful  all  in  a  minute,  all 
sweet  and  harmonious  together,  the  most  touching,  the 
most  national  thing  the  hundred  million  people  could 
be  asked  to  do  would  be  to  take  up  gently  but  firmly  and 
replace  carefully  in  Austin,  Texas,  the  most  splendidly 
mislaid  man,  at  the  moment  anyway,  this  country  can 
produce. 

Because  Mr.  Burleson  is  the  kind  of  man  who  believes 
what  he  wants  to  believe  and  who  keeps  fooled  about 
himself. 

An  entirely  worthy  man  who  had  certain  worthy 
parlor  store  ideas  about  how  money  could  be  saved  in 
business,  made  up  his  mind  that  if  he  was  placed  by  the 
people  at  the  head  of  the  people's  Post  Office,  he  would 
save  their  money  for  the  people  instead  of  running 
their  Post  Office  for  them. 

This  is  all  that  has  happened.  This  was  Mr.  Burle- 
son's  preconception  of  what  he  was  for  and  what  a 
Post  Office  was  for  and  not  a  hundred  million  people 
could  pry  him  out  of  it.  Mr.  Burleson  ran  his  Post 
Office  to  suit  himself  and  his  own  boast  for  himself,  and 
the  people  naturally  in  being  suited  with  their  Post 
Office  had  to  take  anything  that  was  left  over  that  they 
could  get  after  Mr.  Burleson  was  suited  with  it. 

Mr.  Burleson  has  had  a  certain  hustling  automatic 
thoughtless  conception  of  Albert  Sidney  Burleson  and 
what  he  is  like  and  what  he  can  do,  and  so  far  as  any- 
one can  see  he  has  not  spent  three  minutes  in  seven  years 
in  thinking  what  other  people's  conceptions  of  him  are. 

I  am  as  much  in  favor  as  any  one  of  saving  money  in 
a  Post  Office.  But  I  want  my  letters  delivered,  and  I 


feel  that  most  people  in  America  would  agree  with  me 
that  the  main  thins  we  want  from  a  Post  Office  is  to  have 
it,  please,  deliver  our  letters  for  us. 

If  the  manuscript  of  this  article,  which  is  sure  to  be 
rushed  at  the  las'  minute  and  which  should  plan  to 
leave  New  York  for  Philadelphia  Wednesday  night  and 
be  (with  a  special  delivery  stamp  on  it)  in  Philadelphia 
in  the  compositor's  hands  on  Thursday  morning — should 
take  as  has  happened  before,  from  one  and  a  half  clays 
to  two  days  or  three  days  (with  its  special  ten  cents  on 
it  to  hurry  it)  to  get  there,  what  would  any  one  suppose 
I  would  do? 

Of  course  I  could  ask  to  have  the  article  back  a  week 
and  put  in  another  column  on  Mr.  Burleson. 

But  I  am  not  going  to.  Mr.  Burleson  and  the  read- 
ers of  the  Post  are  both  going  to  get  out  of  that  extra 
column. 

I  am  going  to  do  what  I  have  done  over  and  over 
before. 

Instead  of  mailing  as  one  would  suppose  this  manu- 
script at  nine  o'clock  Wednesday  evening  and  having  it 
in  the  compositor's  hands  the  next  morning  with  eight 
cents  for  postage  and  ten  cents  for  special  delivery,  I 
am  going  to  go  down  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station  in  the 
afternoon  at  six  o'clock,  with  my  eighteen-cent  letter  in 
my  hand,  buy  a  three  dollar  ticket  to  Philadelphia  for 
it,  hire  a  .seat  in  the  Pullman  for  it,  hire  a  seat  in  the 
dining-car  for  it,  put  it  up  at  the  Bellevue-Stratford  for 
the  night  and  then  go  out  and  lay  it  on  the  editor 's  desk 
myself  in  the  morning,  see  it  in  his  hand  myself  and  get 
a  receipt  from  his  eye. 

Then  I  am  going  to  pay  my  letter's  bill  at  the  Belle- 
vue-Stratford, buy  a  three  dollar  ticket  to  New  York  and 


THE  AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  A  LETTER       123 

a  place  in  the  Pullman  for  myself,  G.  S.  L.  on  return, 
as  the  human  envelope  Mr.  Burleson  has  required  me  to 
be,  ship  myself  back  to  New  York  as  the  empty,  as  the 
container  this  article  came  in,  and  one  more  intimate 
painful  twelve  dollars  and  thirty-seven  cents  worth  of 
an  eighteen-cent  experience  with  Albert  Sidney  Burleson 
will  be  over. 

Last  time  I  did  this  I  was  early  for  my  train  at  the 
Pennsylvania  Station  and  walked  out  at  the  Eighth  Ave- 
nue end,  looked  up  wistfully  at  Mr.  Burleson 's  new 
Greek  Palace  he  puts  up  in  when  he  comes  to  New  York 
and  I  came  with  deep  feeling  upon  the  following  Beauti- 
ful Emotion  Mr.  Burleson  has  about  himself — four  or 
five  hundred  feet  of  it,  in  letters  four  feet  high  all  across 
the  top. 

NEITHER  SNOW  NOR  RAIN  NOR  HEAT,  NOR 
GLOOM  OF  NIGHT  STAYS  THESE  COURIERS 
FROM  THE  SWIFT  COMPLETION  OF  THEIR  AP- 
POINTED ROUNDS. 

Of  course  I  realized  in  a  minute  that  this  was  said  by 
Herodotus,  or  Homer  or  somebody,  and  was  intended  as 
a  courteous  reference  probably  to  camels  and  not  as 
would  be  supposed  to  Burleson  and  his  forty  thousand 
mighty  locomotives  hurrying  his  orders  up  and  down 
three  thousand  miles  of  sunsets  across  the  land. 

But  I  must  say  that  what  Herodotus  claimed  for  the 
camels  when  I  read  it  as  I  did  that  day  in  huge  marble 
letters  four  feet  high  from  Thirtieth  to  Thirty-second 
Street,  seemed  just  a  little  boastful  for  Mr.  Burleson  as 
I  stood  there  and  gazed  at  it  holding  tight  my  letter  in 
my  hand  I  was  spending  twenty-four  hours  and  twelve 
dollars  to  keep  him  from  mailing  for  me. 


XVII 

THE  MAN  FIFTY-THREE  THOUSAND  POST  OFFICES  FAILED  ON 

fTlHERE  is  one  thing  I  find  -when  I  am  writing  in  a 
A  national  magazine,  trying  to  express  myself  on  an 
idea  I  would  like  to  believe  but  do  not  want  to  be  fooled 
about,  to  four  or  five  million  people.  I  can  not  help  feel- 
ing that  out  of  all  these  four  or  five  million  people,  at  the 
very  least  anyway  there  really  must  be  three  million  and 
five  hundred  thousand  who  are  being  very  much  less 
fooled  about  me  and  about  my  idea  than  I  am.  Every 
day  as  I  sit  down  to  write  one  more  chapter  I  try  to 
catch  up  to  them.  Of  course  anybody  can  see  I  am  not 
equal  to  it,  but  it  does  give  one  a  chance,  and  it  gives 
the  book  a  chance  before  I  am  through,  to  have  some 
sense  in  it. 

I  cannot  help  thinking  what  Albert  Sidney  Burleson, 
who  has  a  hundred  million  people  to  choose  from,  who 
has  millions  of  people  who  are  less  fooled  about  him  than 
he  is,  to  catch  up  to  every  day,  after  all  these  seven  long 
years  they  have  put  on  him,  ought  to  amount  to. 

And  what  his  Post  Office  ought  to  amount  to. 

Of  course  we  are  all  human  and  know  how  it  is,  in  a 
way.  "We  know  that  the  first  thought  that  would  come 
to  Mr.  Burleson  as  to  any  man  when  he  finds  he  is  being 
criticized — that  people  in  fifty-three  thousand  Post 
Offices  are  criticizing  him  and  acting  with  him  as  if  he 
were  fooled  about  himself,  is  the  automatic  thought  of 

124 


THE  MAN  POST  OFFICES  FAILED  ON     125 

self-defense.  The  second  thought,  which  is  what  one 
would  hope  for  from  a  General,  even  a  Postmaster  Gen- 
eral, is  that  one  resents  it  in  oneself,  that  in  an  important 
opening  for  a  man  like  being  called  foolish,  one  stops  all 
one's  thinking-works,  and  slumps  ingloriously,  automati- 
cally and  without  a  quaver  into  self-defense. 

One  would  think  a  man  who  could  get  to  be  a  Post- 
master General  would  have  the  presence  of  mind  when 
he  says  ' '  Ouch ! "  to  a  nation  that  steps  on  his  toes,  to 
fix  his  face  quick,  smile  and  say,  "Thank  you!  Thank 
you !  I  will  see  what  there  is  in  this!" 

"Why  should  a  man  when  God  is  blessing  him  as  he 
does  Mr.  Burleson,  even  out  of  the  mouths  of  his  enemies, 
butt  in  in  the  way  he  does  and  interrupt  truths  with 
enough  juice  in  them  to  make  one  Burleson,  even  one 
Burleson  into  twenty  great  men  before  a  nation's  eyes? 

A  whole  Cabinet — at  least  a  whole  Democratic  Cabinet 
— could  have  been  made  time  and  time  again  out  of  the 
great-man- juice,  the  truth-pepsin  great  men  are  made 
out  of,  this  country  has  wasted  on  Burleson  in  the  past 
seven  years. 


XVIII 

N 

CAUSES  OP  BEING  FOOLED  ABOUT  ONESELF 

T  WOULD  like  to  give  a  diagnosis  of  this  quite  common 
•^  disease,  touch  on  the  causes  and  see  how  they  can  be 
removed. 

There  seem  to  be,  speaking  roughly  and  as  far  as  my 
own  observation  of  psychology  goes,  six  main  ways  in 
which  the  average  man  is  fooled  about  himself  and  needs 
"to  change  his  mind  about  himself. 

He  is  possessed  with  loco-mindedness  or  spotty-mind- 
edness,  sees,  things  as  they  look  to  one  kind  or  group  of 
people — sees  things  in  spotlights  of  personality,  of  place 
or  time — all  the  rest  black. 

Or  he  suffers  from  what  one  might  call  Lost-Minded- 
ness — is  always  getting  lost  in  anything  he  does,  some- 
where between  the  end  and  the  means.  He  either  loses 
the  means  in  contemplating  with  unholy  contemplation 
the  end,  like  an  idealist,  or  he  loses  the  end  in  contem- 
plating the  means. 

The  Habit  of  Flat-Thinking— of  not  thinking  things 
out  in  four  dimensions. 

The  Habit  of  Evaporated  Thinking.  If  I  were  to  gen- 
eralize in  what  I  have  to  say  about  men  who  are  fooled 
by  themselves  instead  of  rounding  my  idea  out  with  some 
particular  man  everybody  knows,  like  Mr.  Burleson  for 
instance,  it  would  be  evaporated  thinking. 

The  Habit  of  Not  Having  any  Habits — leaving  out 

126 


CAUSES  OF  BEING  FOOLED  127 

standardized  elements  in  things  and  not  being  machine- 
minded  enough. 

Automatism,  or  Machine-Mindedness. 

These  six  forms  of  being  fooled  by  oneself  all  boil 
down  in  the  end — in  their  final  cause,  I  suspect  to  the 
last  one,  to  automatism  or  lack  of  conscious  control  of 
the  mind. 


XIX 

LOCO-MINDEDNESS 

LOCO-MINDEDNESS  in  a  Post  Office  consists  in  Mr. 
Burleson's  running  the  Post  Office  for  one  kind  of 
people — the  kind  of  people  he  has  noticed. 

There  are  supposed  to  be  various  kinds  of  people  who 
use  a  Post  Office. 

There  are  the  people  who  write  hundreds  of  letters 
a  day — letters  that  are  being  waited  for  accurately  and 
by  a  particular  mail — like  telegrams. 

There  are  people  who  sit  down  with  a  pen  and  a  piece 
of  paper,  stick  out  their  tongues  and  chewing  on  one 
end  of  the  pen,  and  slaving  away  and  sweating  ink  on  the 
other,  scrooge  out  a  letter  once  in  three  weeks  that  they 
have  put  off  six  months. 

I  have  no  grudge  against  these  people,  but  it  seems  to 
me  that  running  a  Post  Office  exclusively  for  them  as 
Mr.  Burleson  does,  is  a  mistake.  Even  if  they  constitute 
ninety-eight  per  cent  of  the  people,  they  only  mail  one- 
tenth  of  one  per  cent  of  the  letters.  They  may  not  care 
whether  or  not  their  letters  arrive  as  a  matter  of  course, 
the  way  they  used  to  in  our  Post  Office  until  a  little  while 
ago,  as  accurately  as  telegrams  in  their  first  mail  in  the 
morning,  but  probably  they  would  not  feel  hurt  if  they 
did.  But  millions  of  people  in  business  who  write  scores 
or  hundreds  of  letters  a  day,  who  find  themselves  being 
put  off  with  a  Post  Office  that  is  run  apparently 

128 


LOCO-MINDEDNESS  129 

for  people  who  write  two  letters  a  month,  are  hurt. 

In  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  the  letter  from  Now 
York  one  used  to  receive  at  breakfast,  hangs  around  a 
junction  somewhere  now,  waits  for  a  letter  three  hun- 
dred miles  away — a  letter  from  Pittsburgh  to  catch  up 
to  it,  and  they  both  come  together  sweetly  and  with  Mr. 
Burleson's  smile  on  after  luncheon  at  half  past  two  in 
the  afternoon. 

I  do  not  deny  that  from  the  narrower  business  point 
of  view  of  running  a  Post  Office  the  way  some  women 
would  run — or  rather  used  to  run  a  parlor  store — with 
a  bell  on  the  door,  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  Mr. 
Burleson's  philosophy.  Nor  do  I  deny  that  a  store  can 
be  run  and  run  successfully  and  rightly  on  how  much 
of  its  customer's  money  it  can  save  on  each  purchase. 

But  the  point  is  that  if  I  go  into  a  store  in  Northamp- 
ton and  cannot  get  the  things  I  want  there  I  go  into 
some  other  store. 

I  cannot  go  out  from  our  Post  Office  in  Northampton 
and  go  over  and  get  what  I  want  at  some  other  Post 
Office  a  little  further  down  the  street. 

When  I  and  people  in  fifty-three  thousand  Post  Offices, 
say  Aouch !  Mr.  Burleson  says  Pooh ! 

Business  correspondence  between  Washington  and 
New  York  which  used  to  be  a  twenty-four  hour  affair 
is  now  half  a  week. 

Letters  thousands  of  men  in  New  York  used  to  receive 
in  their  offices  in  the  early  morning  before  interviews  be- 
gan and  when  they  had  time  to  read  letters  and  to  jot  an 
answer  to  them  at  the  foot  of  the  page,  are  not  received 
and  placed  before  them  for  their  answers  until  the  late 
morning  or  early  afternoon  when  they  have  other  things 
to  do  and  cannot  even  read  them. 


130      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

So  one's  letters  wait  over  a  day — a  night  and  a  day, 
or  until  one  gets  back  from  Chicago. 

"Why  is  it  Mr.  Burleson  takes  millions  of  dollars'  worth 
a  day  out  of  the  convenience,  out  of  the  profit  and  out 
of  the  efficiency  of  business  in  America  and  then  with  a 
huge  national  swoop  of  compliment  to  himself  points  out 
to  people  how  he  has  saved  them  fifty  cents? 

"Why  is  it  that  Mr.  Burleson  charges  us  a  thousand  dol- 
lars apiece,  in  our  own  private  business,  to  save  us  fifty 
cents  apiece  in  public? 

Who  asked  him  to  ? 

It  is  true  that  there  are  people  in  America  who  really 
prefer  to  do  business  at  a  puttering  kind  of  a  store  no 
matter  how  much  time  it  costs  them.  They  take  natur- 
ally to  a  cash  and  carry  store  or  to  a  store  that  lovingly 
saves  one  forty  cents'  worth  of  money  by  taking  four 
dollars'  worth  of  one's  time. 

It  is  probably  true  that  some  people  want  a  cash  and 
carry  freight-car  Post  Office  and  want  Mr.  Burleson  to 
save  their  money  for  them.  Millions  of  people  would 
make  more  money  by  not  having  their  Post  Office  save 
money  for  them.  Mr.  Burleson  insists  his  business  is  to 
save  people's  money  for  them  whether  they  can  afford 
to  have  him  save  it  or  not. 

The  first  cause  of  Mr.  Burleson 's  being  fooled  about 
himself  is  that  he  is  spotty-minded  about  people,  the  fact 
that  he  has  been  running  the  Post  Office  with  reference 
to  one  special  slow  canal-minded  kind  of  America.  His 
mind  is  jet  black  about  all  the  rest. 

Perhaps  Mr.  Burleson  is  not  the  only  one  of  us  in 
America  who  is  loco-minded  or  spotty-minded  in  busi- 
ness, who  is  running  his  business  into  the  ground  by 
noticing  only  one  kind  of  people. 


XX 

FLAT-THINB3NQ 
THINKING  IN  ME-FIAT 

WHAT  nature  seems  to  have  really  intended,  is  that 
human  beings  should  do  their  thinking  in  four 
dimensions. 

The  thickness  is  what  I  think. 

The  breadth  is  what  other  people  think. 

The  length  is  what  God  thinks. 

Then  when  a  man  has  taken  these  three  and  put  them 
together  and  sees  them  as  a  whole,  that  is  to  say  when 
I  have  taken  what  I  think,  and  what  I  think  other  peo- 
ple think,  and  what  I  think  God  thinks,  and  put  them 
together  as  well  as  I  can,  the  result  is — who  I  am  and 
what  I  amount  to. 

Most  people  tend  most  of  the  time,  unless  very  careful, 
to  think  in  the  first  or  "I  think"  dimension,  stop  on  the 
way  to  God  in  the  "I  think"  thickness,  and  get  lost  in 
it,  or  they  get  lost  in  the  "They  Think"  breadth,  lost 
in  what  other  people  think  and  never  get  to  God  at  all. 

The  trouble  with  the  Post  Office  has  been  that  Mr. 
Burleson  likes  to  think  in  the  first  or  "I  think"  dimen- 
sion, does  not  care  what  other  people  think  and  skips 
right  past  them  straight  to  God. 

Probably  it  would  be  unfair  to  say  that  the  Post  Office 
is  egotistical,  self-centered,  sitting  and  looking  at  its  own 
navel  full  of  the  bliss  and  self-glorification  of  Mr.  Burle- 

131 


132      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

son's  being  the  Hero  of  economy  and  winning  his  bo^st 
of  saving  the  money  of  the  people,  but  it  does  seem  as 
if  it  would  cool  off  the  Post  Office  some  in  its  present 
second-rate  business  idea — its  idea  of  freeing  the  letter- 
making  business  from  doing  anything  more  for  the  peo- 
ple than  can  be  helped — if  Mr.  Burleson  would  stop  and 
sit  down  and  have  a  long  serious  think  about  what  fifty 
thousand  Post  Offices  think. 

There  have  been  days — with  my  half-past  two  letters 
when  if  I  had  Roger  Babson's  gift  for  being  graphic  I 
would  have  charted  Mr.  Burleson 's  Post  Office  like  this : 


US. 
PO. 


ME         TFie 
"People 


XXI 

LOST-MINDEDNESS 
OB  LOSING  THE  END  IN  THE  MEANS 

I  HAVE  wanted,  before  dropping  the  causes  of  peo- 
ple's being  fooled  about  themselves,  to  dwell  for  a 
moment  on  lost-mindedness,  or  losing  the  end  in  the 
means. 

To  avoid  evaporated  thinking  or  generalizing  I  am 
illustrating  my  idea  once  more  from  Mr.  Burleson  as 
the  great  common  experience  of  all  of  us  which  we  daily 
have  together,  Mr.  Burleson  makes  us  see  so  many  things 
together. 

I  wish  something  could  be  done  to  get  our  Postmaster 
General  to  sit  down  seriously  with  a  two-cent  stamp  and 
look  at  it  and  study  it. 

It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  Mr.  Burleson  has  ever 
thought  very  much  about  the  two-cent  stamp,  that  he 
quite  understands  what,  in  a  country  like  this,  a  two- 
cent  stamp  means. 

Every  now  and  then  when  I  take  one  up  and  hold  it 
in  my  hand,  I  look  at  it  before  putting  my  tongue  to  it 
and  think  what  a  two-cent  stamp  believes.  It  has  come 
to  be  for  me  like  a  little  modest  seal  for  my  country — 
like  a  flag  or  a  symbol.  A  two-cent  stamp  is  the  signa- 
ture of  the  nation,  the  tiny  stupendous  Magna  Charta  of 
the  rights  of  the  people. 

As  an  elevator  makes  forty  stories  in  a  sky-scraper 

133 


134      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

as  good  as  the  first  one,  the  two-cent  stamp  represents  the 
right  of  one  town  in  this  country,  so  far  as  the  United 
States  is  concerned,  to  be  as  convenient  and  as  well  lo- 
cated as  another.  Three  miles  or  three  thousand  miles 
for  two  cents. 

In  physical  things  it  is  true  that  America  because 
it  cannot  help  it  has  to  put  a  penalty  on  a  man  in  Seattle 
for  being  three  thousand  miles  from  New  York,  but  so 
far  as  the  truth  is  concerned,  so  far  as  thinking  is  con- 
cerned, it  costs  a  man  no  more  to  think  three  thousand 
miles  than  to  think  three.  The  country  pays  for  it  for 
him. 

America  tells  people  millions  of  times  a  day  on  every 
postage  stamp  that  it  is  the  thought,  the  prayer,  the 
desire  of  this  country  to  have  every  man,  no  matter 
where  his  body  is  held  down  in  it  or  how  far  his  freight 
for  his  body  has  to  be  sent  to  him,  as  near  in  his  soul 
to  Washington  as  Rock  Creek  Park  and  as  near  to  New 
York  as  Yonkers. 

The  two-cent  stamp  is  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  spirit- 
ual rights,  the  patriotic  forces  and  the  intellectual  lib- 
erties of  the  people  and  when  Albert  Sidney  Burleson, 
of  Austin,  Texas,  by  establishing  a  zone  system  for  ideas, 
for  conveying  the  ideas  of  the  great  central  newspapers 
and  magazines  in  which  a  whole  nation  thinks  together — 
with  one  huge  national  thoughtless  provincial  swish  of 
his  own  provincial  mind  coolly  takes  ten  thousand  cities 
that  like  to  do  their  thinking  when  they  like,  in  Xew 
York  or  in  Philadelphia,  Washington  and  Chicago,  jams 
them  down  into  their  own  neighborhoods,  glues  them  to 
their  own  papers,  tells  all  these  thousand  of  cities  that 
they  have  got  to  be,  no  matter  how  big  they  are,  villages 
in  their  thinking,  cut  off  from  the  great  common  or  na- 


LOST-MINDEDNESS  135 

tional  thinking,  Mr.  Burleson  commits  a  wrong  against 
the  unity,  the  single-heartedness  and  great-mindedness 
of  a  great  people  struggling  to  think  together  and  to 
act  together  in  the  welter  of  our  modern  world,  the  peo- 
ple will  never  forget. 

Why  in  a  desperate  crisis  of  the  world  when  of  all 
times  this  nation  has  got  to  be  pulled  together,  should 
people  who  are  accustomed  to  taking  a  bird  's-eye  view  of 
the  nation  like  the  Literary  Digest  be  fined  for  it  ?  "Why 
fine  the  readers  of  the  Review  of  Reviews  or  Collier's 
or  Scribner's  for  living  in  one  place  rather  than  an- 
other? I  like  to  think  of  it  Saturday  night,  half  the 
boys  of  a  nation  three  thousand  miles  reading  over  each 
other 's  shoulders  the  same  pages  together  in  the  Youth 's 
Companion. 

Every  man  is  entitled  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness — that  is  to  life,  to  the  liberty  to  live  where 
he  wants  to  and  to  the  happiness  of  not  being  fined  for  it. 

A  man's  body  by  reason  of  being  a  body  has  to  put 
up  with  the  inconvenience  of  not  being  everywhere,  but 
his  soul — what  he  knows  and  feels  and  believes  and  sees 
in  common  with  others,  has  a  right  not  to  be  told  it  can- 
not see  things  the  rest  of  us  are  seeing  all  together,  has 
a  right  not  to  be  told  he  will  have  to  read  something 
published  within  a  rim  of  five  hundred  miles  of  his  own 
doorbell — that  his  soul  has  got  to  live  with  a  Seattle  lid 
on,  or  a  Boston  lid  on. 

As  a  symbol  of  the  liberty  and  unity  of  the  people 
in  this  country,  the  flag  is  pleasant  of  course  to  look  at, 
and  it  flourishes  a  good  deal,  but  it  does  not  do  anything 
and  do  it  all  day,  every  day,  the  way  the  little  humble 
pink  postage  stamp  does,  millions  of  it  a  minute,  to  make 
people  feel  close  to  one  another,  make  people  act  in 


136      THE  GHOST  IN 'THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

America  as  if  we  were  in  the  one  same  big  room  to- 
gether, in  the  one  great  living-room  of  the  nation. 

There  is  not  anything  it  would  not  be  worth  this  peo- 
ple's while  to  pay  for  making  men  of  all  classes  and  of 
all  regions  in  this  country  think  and  hope  and  pray  to- 
gether in  the  one  great  living-room  of  the  nation — some 
place  where  three  million  people  act  as  one. 

It  is  what  we  are  for  in  this  country  to  prove  to  a 
world  that  this  thing  can  be  done,  and  that  we  are 
doing  it,  to  have  some  place  like  a  great  national  maga- 
zine where  three  million  people  can  show  they  are  do- 
ing it. 

And  now  Mr.  Albert  Sidney  Burleson,  of  Austin, 
Texas,  steps  up  to  a  great  national  magazine,  a  great 
hall  where  a  nation  thinks  the  same  thought,  holds  a 
meeting  once  a  week  together  like  the  Saturday  Eve- 
ning Post,  like  Collier's — dismisses  two  or  three  million 
people  from  everywhere  who  get  together  there  every 
Saturday  night,  and  tells  them  to  go  home  and  read  the 
Hampshire  County  Ggeette. 

It  is  not  a  worse  case  perhaps  of  lost-mindedness  or 
of  losing  the  end  in  the  means  than  the  rest  of  us  are 
guilty  of,  but  with  such  an  inspiring  example  of  what 
not  to  do,  and  of  how  it  works  to  do  it — to  lose  the  end 
in  the  means,  I  have  to  mention  it — not  in  behalf  of  Mr. 
Burleson,  but  in  behalf  of  all  of  us. 


XXII 

I  HAD  not  intended  to  illustrate  my  idea  of  amateur 
technique  in  self-criticism  quite  so  much  with  Mr. 
Burleson,  especially  as  I  stand  for  a  bi-partisan  point 
of  view.  I  wish  there  were  some  way  of  dealing  with 
Mr.  Burleson  as  a  Republican  for  fifteen  minutes  and 
then  as  a  Democrat  for  fifteen  minutes,  and  in  dealing  as 
I  am,  in  what  might  be  called  a  nationally  personal  sub- 
ject, a  technique  for  self-criticism  in  all  of  us,  I  only 
hope  my  Democratic  friends  will  give  me  credit  for 
making  use  of  Mr.  Burleson  not  as  a  Democrat  (it  is  just 
their  luck  that  he's  a  Democrat),  but  as  a  specimen 
human  being  I  am  trying  to  get  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  Republicans  that  are  just  like  him,  not  to  be  like 
any  longer.  I  have  only  used  our  Postmaster  General 
in  this  rather  personal  fashion  because  he  is  so  close  and 
personal  to  us,  because  in  a  time  when  we  are  all  in 
peculiar  danger  of  being  fooled  by  ourselves  he  con- 
stitutes, in  plain  sight  a  kind  of  national  Common  De- 
nominator of  the  sins  of  all  of  us. 

We  are  all  concerned.    "We  all  want  to  know. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  say  pleasantly  as  if  it  settled 
something  that  the  reason  Mr.  Burleson  keeps  doing 
things  and  keeps  picking  at  most  people  so  through 
fifty-three  thousand  Post  Offices  day  after  day,  all  day, 
and  night  after  night,  all  night,  is  that  he  is  fooled  about 
himself. 

137 


138      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

But  why  ?  What  are  the  causes  and  the  remedies  peo- 
ple in  general  can  look  up  and  have  the  benefit  of  ?  When 
we  are  being  fooled  about  ourselves,  when  we  believe 
what  we  want  to  believe,  and  are  not  willing  to  change 
our  minds  about  ourselves,  what  is  there  we  can  do? 


XXIII 

SELF-DISCIPLIXE  BY  PROXY 

MY  own  experience  is  that  my  own  faults  really  im- 
press me  most  \vhen  I  see  them  in  other  people. 

I  cannot  help  feeling  hopefully  that  out  of  the  five  or 
six  million  people  who  are  supposed  to  read  a  national 
magazine,  there  may  be  a  few  scattered  hundred  thou- 
sands who  will  catch  themselves  suspecting  they  may 
have  moments  of  being  like  me  in  this. 

Self-discipline  sets  in,  as  far  as  I  can  make  out,  in 
most  of  us  in  a  rather  weak  and  watery  way — that  is: 
we  usually  begin  with  seeing  how  unbecoming  other  peo- 
ple make  our  faults  look.  Then  we  begin  disciplining 
our  faults  in  other  people,  get  our  first  faint  moral  glow, 
and  then  before  we  know  it,  having  once  got  started 
chasing  up  our  faults  in  other  people  we  get  so  inter- 
ested in  them  we  cannot  even  leave  them  alone  in  our- 
selves. 

Disciplining  other  people  in  itself  as  an  object  almost 
never  does  any  good.  Mr.  Burleson  is  not  going  to  get 
anything  much  out  of  this  article,  but  I  am  the  better 
man  for  it,  and  there  are  others,  a  million  or  so  perhaps, 
who  are  helping  me  chase  up  our  faults  in  him,  who  ,will 
chase  them  back  to  their  own  homes  from  the  Post  Office. 

There  are  few  of  us  who  do  not  have,  certain  people, 
certain  times,  and  certain  subjects,  with  which  we  can 
be  trusted  to  be  unerringly  fooled  about  ourselves. 

139 


140      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  AYHITE  HOUSE 

And  when  we  consider  how  Albert  Sidney  Burleson 
has  missed  his  chance,  when  we  consider  what  he  could 
have  got  out  of  fifty-three  thousand  wistful  silenced  Post 
Offices  in  the  way  of  pointers  in  not  being  fooled  about 
himself,  we  cannot  but  take  Mr.  Burleson  very  gravely 
and  a  little  personally.  "We  cannot  but  be  grateful  to 
Mr.  Burleson  in  our  better  business  moments  as  Amer- 
ica's best,  most  satisfactory,  most  complete  exhibit  of 
what  is  the  matter  with  American  business. 

I  leave  with  the  reader  the  Thought,  that  probably 
the  majority  of  men  who  have  been  watching  Mr.  Burle- 
son for  seven  years  wasting  fifty-three  thousand  Post 
Offices,  and  all  the  fifty-three  thousand  Post  Offices  could 
do  for  him  to  make  a  successful  man  out  of  him,  will 
go  down  to  their  offices  next  Monday  morning,  and  in- 
stead of  worming  criticism  out  of  everybody  in  sight, 
instead  of  using  their  business  and  everybody  who  ap- 
proaches them  in  the  business  to  produce  goods,  will 
use  the  business  to  produce  the  impression  that  they  are 
perfect  and  that  nobody  can  tell  them  anything — will 
just  sit  there  all  glazed  over  with  complacency  cemented 
down  into  their  self-defending  minds,  imperious,  im- 
pervious, as  hard  to  give  good  advice  to,  as  hard  to 
make  a  dent  in  as  beautiful  shining  porcelain-lined  bath- 
tubs. 


It  would  be  only  fair  and  would  save  a  good  deal  of 
time  in  business  for  some  of  us  who  like  to  try  new  ideas, 
if  there  were  some  way  of  telling  these  men — if  some 
warning  could  be  given  to  us  not  to  bother  with  them — 
if  these  men  with  brilliantly  non-porous  minds,  could 
be  fitted  up  so  that  one  could  tell  them  at  sight — by  their 
heads  looking  the  way  they  are — by  their  being  bald — by 


SELF-DISCIPLINE  BY  PROXY  141 

their  having  brilliantly  non-porous  heads — just  nice  per- 
fectly plain  shiny  knobs  of  not-thinking. 

One  could  tell  them  across  a  room. 

But  the  man  with  the  most  refreshingly  eager  mind 
toward  new  ideas,  I  know,  the  mind  the  most  brilliantly 
open — which  fairly  glistens  inside  with  eagerness,  glis- 
tens outside,  too. 

The  only  thing  there  is  to  go  by,  in  telling  a  man  with 
a  non-porous  mind,  is  to  try  gently — changing  it,  and  see 
what  happens. 


XXIV 

MAOHINE-MINDEDNESS 

THE  various  forms  I  have  mentioned  of  the  malady  of 
being  fooled  by  oneself,  all  practically  boil  down  to 
one  in  the  end — one  cause  which  we  have  to  recognize 
and  avoid — automatism,  the  lack  of  conscious  control  of 
the  mind — letting  oneself  be  rolled  under  the  little 
wheels  in  one's  head. 

The  main  central  cause  operating  with  people  when 
they  are  being  fooled  about  themselves,  is  machine-mind- 
edness. 

A  man's  body  being  a  great  storehouse  of  psycho- 
mechanical  processes  and  habits  makes  his  mind  react 
automatically,  and  when  some  one  calls  him  a  fool  or 
acts  with  him  as  if  possibly  he  might  have  moments  of 
being  fooled  about  himself,  the  man's  whole  nature  like 
a  spring  snaps  his  mind  back  into  self-defense,  and  in- 
stead of  being  grateful  and  thoughtful  as  a  rational  or 
second-thought  person  always  is,  he  lets  his  subconscious 
self  take  hold  of  him,  tumtum  him  along  into  showing 
everybody  how  perfect  he  is. 

Everybody  knows  how  it  is. 


142 


XXV 

NEW  BRAIN  TRACKS  IN  BUSINESS 

SPEAKING  roughly,  there  are  two  kinds  of  men  who 
are  markedly  successful  in  business — the  men  who 
give  people  what  they  want,  and  the  men  who  make  peo- 
ple want  things  they  have  thought  they  did  not  want 
before.  Moving  pictures,  watermelons,  pianolas,  tele- 
phones, forks,  flying  machines  and  locomotives,  appen- 
dicitis, Christianity  and  chewing  gum,  umbrellas  and 
even  babies — have  all  been  brought  to  pass  by  convincing 
other  human  beings  that  they  do  not  know  what  they 
want,  by  a  process  which  is  essentially  courting,  that  is : 
by  a  combination  of  fighting  and  affection  which  arrests, 
holds  and  enthralls  people  into  adding  new  selves  to 
themselves. 

I  confess  to  a  certain  partiality  for  men  who  get  rich 
by  making  people  different  because  I  am  an  evolutionist 
and  the  chances  are  that  anything  you  do  to  most  people 
that  makes  them  different,  improves  them. 

But  comparisons  are  irrelevant  and  I  am  not  willing  to 
back  down  from  my  good  opinion  of  American  human 
nature  in  business  and  admit  that  men  who  prosper  by 
making  people  want  telephones,  or  things  they  have  not 
wanted,  are  the  business  superiors  of  men  who  prosper 
by  just  piling  up  on  people  more  and  more  and  better — 
things  they  want  already. 

The  superior  business  man  is  the  man  who  has  a  su- 

143 


144      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

perior  knowledge  of  himself,  who  searches  out  and  uses 
the  gift  he  is  born  with  in  himself  and  who  gets  other 
people  to  use  theirs.  Because  it  happens  that  I  am  an 
inventor,  or  what  is  called  an  artist,  and  because  though 
I  cannot  remember,  without  the  slightest  doubt,  I  began 
to  advertise  that  I  was  here,  or  about  to  be  here,  before 
I  was  born,  and  because  I  would  be  bored  to  death  hand- 
ing out  to  people  things  I  know  they  want,  or  present- 
ing to  people  truths  they  merely  believe  already,  it  would 
be  shallow  for  me  to  say  that  the  men  in  American  busi- 
ness who  do  not  make  people  want  things,  and  who  just 
heap  up  on  them  what  they  want,  are  not  successful  men, 
are  not  equally  important,  equally  essential  to  the  state 
and  are  not  doing  for  themselves  and  others  just  what 
the  country,  if  it  was  a  wise  country  and  was  around 
asking  people  to  do  things,  would  ask  them  to  do. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  believe  that  in  the  present  new 
tragic  economic  crisis  with  which  all  kinds  of  business 
men,  whatever  they  are  like,  are  being  brought  sharply 
face  to  face  at  a  time  when  new  brain  tracks  in  business 
are  especially  called  for — a  time  when  practically  mil- 
lions of  people  have  got  to  have  them  and  use  them 
whether  they  want  to  or  not,  I  have  thought  it  would  be 
to  the  point  to  consider  in  the  chapters  that  follow,  what 
new  brain  tracks  are  like,  how  they  work,  and  what  peo- 
ple who  have  been  accustomed  not  to  have  new  brain 
tracks  or  to  find  them  awkward,  can  do  to  get  them 
and  to  make  them  work. 


BOOK  III 

/ 

TECHNIQUE  FOR  A  NATION'S  GETTING  ITS 
WAY 


BIG   IN   LITTLE 

A  NATION,  in  order  to  be  a  safe  nation  for  itself, 
or  safe  for  other  nations  in  this  world,  must  have 
a  technique  for  getting  and  for  getting  a  world  to  want 
it  to  get — its  own  way. 

I  am  interested  in  a  technique  for  a  nation's  getting 
its  way  and  deserving  to  get  its  way  because  I  want  to 
get  mine,  and  because  being  human  and  having  quite  a 
good  deal  of  human  nature  taken  out  of  the  same  stuff — 
out  of  the  same  mixed  hot  and  cold  ingredients  as  other 
people's,  I  have  quite  naturally  come  to  think  that  what 
works  for  me,  if  I  cut  down  to  the  quick  and  am  honest 
with  myself,  in  getting  what  I  want,  will  probably, 
with  proper  shadings,  of  course,  work  for  anybody. 

I  have  thought  I  would  see  if  I  could  not  work  out 
in  this  book,  a  technique  which  could  be  used  modestly 
by  one  man,  tried  out  in  miniature  as  it  were — a  tech- 
nique for  getting  and  deserving  to  get  one's  own  way. 

I  pick  out  one  man,  to  try  out  the  principle  on,  be- 
cause it  is  safer  and  fairer  to  try  out  a  principle  other 
people  are  supposed  to  be  asked  to  risk,  on  one  man 
first. 

Because  I  happen  to  know  him  better  than  I  know 
anybody  else,  and  because  my  experience  is,  he  will 
stand  more  from  me  than  anybody  else,  I  have  picked 
out  myself. 


When  the  technique  has  been  tried  out  on  one  man 
the  people  who  know  him  will  believe  it  and  try  it. 
Then  we  will  try  it  on  one  hundred  men  one  after  the 
other.  Then  as  I  have  been  working  it  out  in  this  book, 
try  it  on  the  body-politic,  the  soul  and  body  of  a  nation, 
try  it  on  a  hundred  million  people. 

Then  with  a  technique  for  having  a  body  and  for  not 
being  fooled  by  ourselves  and  having  some  substance 
in  what  we  say  and  what  we  do,  we  would  have  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  hundred  million  people  making  themselves 
felt  in  political  conventions,  making  themselves  felt  in 
The  White  House  and  even  being  noticed  perhaps  in 
time  at  the  other  end  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue  by  the 
great  I  AM,  or  I  CAN'T,  or  I  WON'T  tucked  under  the 
come  of  all  of  us — called  The  United  States  Senate. 


II 

CONSCIOUS  CONTROL  OF  BRAIN  TRACKS 

MY  experience  is  that  the  first  thing  for  me  to  at- 
tend to  and  know,  in  getting  people  to  let  me  have 
my  way,  is  to  know  when  and  how  to  discover  and  open 
up  in  people  new  brain  tracks  and  when  and  how  to 
make  my  main  dependence  on  their  old  ones. 

Getting  what  one  wants  from  people  turns  on  seeing 
the  situation — the  brain  track  situation  in  one's  own 
mind  at  a  particular  time,  and  in  other  people's,  as  it 
really  is. 

In  other  words,  the  way  to  get  one's  way  with  people 
is  to  know  and  extend  one's  consciousness  down  deeper 
into  one's  subconsciousness  in  one's  own  mind,  so  that 
one  draws  on  the  conscious  and  the  subconscious  in  one 's 
own  mind  at  will,  so  that  gradually  having  the  habit  of 
drawing  on  the  conscious  and  the  subconscious  in  one's 
own  mind  at  will,  one  soon  makes  oneself  master  of  the 
conscious  and  the  subconscious  in  the  minds  of  others. 

I  do  not  precisely  know  this,  of  course,  because  I 
have  never  practiced  having  my  own  way  with  other 
people  as  much  as  I  would  like,  but  my  theory  and  my 
observation  of  others  who  have  practiced  on  me  leads 
me,  in  speaking  for  all  of  us  to  believe  this:  The  way 
for  a  man  to  do  who  wants  to  get  his  own  way  with 
people  is  to  heighten  his  consciousness,  deepen  his  con- 
sciousness down  into  his  subconsciousness,  live  more 

149 


150      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

abundantly  in  soul  and  body,  deeper  down  and  higher  up 
and  further  over  into  himself  than  others.  Then  he 
gets  his  way  with  others  because  everybody  wants  him 
to,  almost  without  knowing  it  or  anybody's  else  know- 
ing it. 

A  man  who  does  this  becomes  like  any  other  great 
force  of  nature.  The  indication  seems  to  be  that  what 
the  artist  in  a  man  or  the  engineer  in  him  does  with 
the  genius  in  him  namely:  the  driving  down  of  an 
artesian  well  of  consciousness  into  his  subconsciousness, 
the  using  of  his  new  brain  tracks  and  old  ones  together — 
is  the  secret  of  getting  one's  way  for  all  of  us,  whether 
with  Nature  or  with  one  another. 

Of  course,  the  hard  part  of  this  program  to  arrange 
for  is  the  new  brain  tracks  to  put  with  the  old  ones  both 
in  getting  our  own  way  with  other  people  and  with  our- 
selves. 

This  part  of  my  book  deals  with  what  is  a  very  per- 
sonal problem  for  most  of  us — what  new  brain  tracks  are 
really  like,  how  they  work,  and  what  people  can  do  to 
get  them. 


Ill 

WHAT  IS   CALLED  THINKING 

THE  one  special  trait  that  stands  out  in  all  new  brain 
tracks  in  common,  is  that  nobody  wants  them.  The 
way  people  really  act — even  the  best  of  us,  when  some 
one  steps  ui  to  them  with  new  tracks  for  their  brains, 
is  as  if  they  had  no  place  to  put  them. 

The  plain  psychological  facts  about  them  when  one 
fronts  up  with  them  are  rather  appalling.  They  first 
appear  when  one  begins  to  observe  closely  what  one 
actually  does  with  one 's  own  personal  listening  and  what 
other  people,  when  one  checks  them  up,  do  with  their 
listening  to  us. 

In  making  as  I  have  tried  to  make  during  the  last 
six  months,  a  few  special  studies  in  not  being  fooled  by 
myself,  studies  in  changing  what  I  call  my  mind,  I  have 
come  to  feel  that  any  man  who  will  try  several  hours 
each  day  a  few  harmless  experiments  on  his  friends  and 
on  himself  and  his  other  enemies,  will  come  to  two  or 
three  thoughts  about  Man  as  a  rational  being  which 
would  have  seemed  dreams  to  him  six  months  ago. 

The  first  fact  is  this : 

Nearly  everything  that  is  the  matter  with  the  world 
can  be  traced  back  to  the  fact  that  people  have,  when 
one  studies  them  closely,  two  sets  of  ears — one  set  that 
they  look  as  if  they  used,  put  up  more  or  less  showily 
before  everybody  on  the  outside,  and  another  entirely 

151 


secret  or  real  set  inside,  that  they  seriously  connect 
up  with  their  souls  and  themselves  and  really  do  their 
living  with. 

I  first  came  on  them — on  these  two  sets  of  ears,  in  my 
experiences  as  a  young  man  in  speaking  to  audiences. 
In  the  vague  helpless  way  a  young  lecturer  has,  I  studied 
as  well  as  I  could  what  seemed  to  me  to  be  happening 
to  my  audiences — what  they  seemed  to  be  doing  to  them- 
selves, but  it  was  a  good  many  years  before  I  really 
woke  up  to  what  they  were  doing  to  me,  to  the  way  their 
two  sets  of  ears  made  them  treat  me. 

I  would  watch  people  sometimes  all  suddenly  in  the 
middle  of  a  sentence  shutting  up  their  real  ears  or  in- 
side ears  at  me  and  then  holding  their  outside  ones  up 
at  me  kindly  as  if  I  cared,  or  as  if  I  doted  on  them — 
on  outside  ears,  on  ears  of  any  kind  if  I  could  get  them 
and  I  would  feel  hurt  but  I  did  not  wake  up  to  what 
it  meant. 

As  I  remember  it  the  first  thing  that  made  me  really 
wake  up  to  the  truth  about  ears  was  the  fact  that  I  never 
seemed  to  want  to  speak  if  I  could  help  it,  to  an  audi- 
ence all  made  up  of  women,  like  a  Woman's  Club,  or 
all  made  up  of  men,  or  to  an  audience  all  made  up  of 
very  young  people  or  of  very  old  people,  or  of  people 
who  presented  a  solid  front  of  middle  age. 

The  trouble  with  a  one-sexed  audience  or  a  one-classed 
audience  seems  to  be  that  they  all  stop  right  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  same  sentence  sometimes  and  change  to  their 
outside  ears  all  at  once  and  before  one's  eyes.  In  any 
audience  representing  everybody  when  any  one  person 
feels  like  it,  and  goes  off  on  some  strange  psychological 
trail  of  his  all  alone,  one  can  keep  adjusted  and  one  soon 
begins  to  find  that  an  audience  of  men  and  women  both 


WHAT  IS  CALLED  THINKING  153 

is  easier  to  stand  before  than  one  which  gives  itself  up 
to  easy  one-sex  listening,  because  the  ducks  and  dodges 
people  make  in  one's  meaning,  the  subterranean  pas- 
sages, tunnels  and  flights  people  go  off  on,  from  what 
one  says,  all  check  each  other  up  and  are  different.  When 
the  women  go  under  the  men  emerge.  The  same  seems 
to  be  true  in  speaking  to  mixed  ages.  Fewer  passages 
are  wasted.  Middle-aged  people  who  remember,  and 
look  forward  in  listening  always  help  in  an  audience  be- 
cause they  seem  to  like  to  collect  stray  sentences  cheer- 
fully thrown  away  by  people  who  have  not  started  re- 
membering much  yet,  or  by  people  who  do  not  do  any- 
thing else. 

I  do  not  want,  in  making  my  point,  to  seem  to  ex- 
aggerate, but  so  far  as  what  people  do  to  me  is  concerned 
if  people  would  get  up  and  go  out  of  a  hall  each  sentence 
they  stop  listening  or  stop  understanding,  it  would  not 
be  any  worse — the  psychological  clang  of  it — than  what 
they  do  do.  It  would  merely  look  worse.  The  facts 
about  the  way  people  listen,  about  the  way  they  use 
their  two  sets  of  ears  on  one,  snap  one  out  of  their 
souls,  switch  one  over  from  their  real  or  inside  ears 
to  their  outside  ones,  in  three  adjectives,  are  beyond 
belief.  And  they  all  keep  thinking  they  are  listening, 
too.  One  almost  never  speaks  in  public  without  seeing 
or  expecting  to  see  little  heaps  of  missed  sentences  lying 
everywhere  all  around  one  as  one  goes  out  of  the  hall. 

What  is  true  of  one's  words  to  people  one  can  keep 
one's  eye  on,  is  still  more  true  of  words  in  books. 

If  I  could  fit  up  each  reader  in  this  book  with  a 
little  alarm  clock  or  music  box  in  his  mind,  that  would 
go  off  in  each  sentence  he  is  skipping  without  knowing 
it,  nobody  would  disagree  with  me  a  minute  for  found- 


154      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

ing  what  I  have  to  say  in  this  book  about  changing  peo- 
ple's minds  upon  the  way  people  do  not  listen  except  in 
skips,  hops  and  flashes  to  what  they  hear,  the  way  they 
do  not  see  what  they  look  at,  or  the  way  they  think, 
when  they  think,  when  they  think  they  think. 

(For  every  time  I  say  "they"  in  the  last  paragraph 
will  the  reader  kindly  read  "we.") 

If  there  were  some  kind  of  moody  and  changeable  type 
all  sizes,  kinds  and  colors,  and  if  this  book  could  be 
printed  with  irregular,  up  and  down  and  sidling  lines — 
printed  for  people  the  way  they  are  going  to  read  it, 
if  the  sentences  in  this  chapter  could  duck  under  into 
subterranean  passages  or  could  take  nice  little  airy 
swoops  or  flights — if  every  line  on  a  page  could  dart  and 
waver  around  in  different  kinds  and  colors  of  type,  make 
a  perfect  picture  of  what  is  going  to  happen  to  it  when 
it  is  going  through  people's  minds,  there  is  not  anybody 
who  would  not  agree  with  me  that  all  these  people  we 
see  about  us  who  seem  to  us  to  be  living  their  lives  in 
stops,  skips  and  flashes  probably  live  so,  because  they 
listen  so. 

If  the  type  in  the  pages  in  this  book  dealing  with 
Mr.  Burleson  could  be  more  responsive,  could  act  the 
way  Mr.  Burleson 's  mind  does  when  he  reads  it — that 
is  if  I  could  have  the  printer  dramatize  in  the  way  he 
sets  the  type  what  Mr.  Burleson  is  going  to  do  with  his 
mind  or  not  do  with  his  mind  with  each  pellucid  sen- 
tence as  it  purls — even  Mr.  Burleson  himself  would  be 
a  good  deal  shocked  to  see  how  very  little  about  him- 
self in  my  book,  he  was  really  carrying  away  from  it. 

If  in  Mr.  Burleson 's  own  personal  copy  of  this  book, 
I  were  to  have  this  next  chapter  about  him  that  is  going 
to  follow  soon — especially  the  sentences  in  it  he  is  going 


WHAT  IS  CALLED  THINKING  155 

to  slur  over  the  meaning  of  or  practically  not  read  at 
all — printed  in  invisible  ink  and  there  were  just  those 
long  pale  gaps  about  him,  so  that  he  would  have  to  pour 
chemical  on  them  to  get  them — so  that  he  would  have 
to  dip  the  pages  in  some  kind  of  nice  literary  goo  to  see 
what  other  people  were  reading  about  him,  he  would 
probably  carry  away  more  meaning  than  I  or  any  one 
could  hope  for  in  ordinary  type  like  this,  which  gives 
people  a  kind,  pleasant,  superficial  feeling  they  are 
reading  whether  they  are  reading  or  not. 


IV 

LIVING  DOWN  CELLAR  IN  ONE*S  OWN  MIND 

WHAT  I  saw  a  little  three-year-old  girl  the  other 
day  doing  with  her  dolly — dragging  its  flaxen- 
haired  head  around  on  the  floor  and  holding  on  to  it 
dreamily  by  the  leg,  is  what  the  average  man 's  body  can 
be  seen  almost  any  day,  doing  to  his  mind. 

One  feels  almost  as  if  one  ought  to  hush  it  up  at  first 
until  a  few  million  more  men  have  made  similar  practical 
observations  in  the  psychology  and  physiology  of  modern 
life  when  one  comes  to  see  what  our  civilization  is  bring- 
ing us  to — what  it  really  is  that  almost  any  man  one 
knows,  including  the  man  of  marked  education — take 
him  off  his  guard  almost  any  minute — is  letting  his  body 
do  to  his  mind. 

A  very  large  part  of  even  quite  intelligent  conversa- 
tion has  no  origination  in  it  and  is  just  made  up  of 
phonograph  records.  You  say  a  thing  to  a  man  that  calls 
up  Record  No.  999873  and  he  puts  it  in  for  you,  starts 
his  motor  and  begins  to  make  it  go  round  and  round 
for  you.  He  just  tumtytums  off  some  of  his  subcon- 
sciousness  for  you.  Whether  he  is  selling  you  a  carpet 
sweeper  or  converting  your  soul,  it  is  his  body  that  is 
using  his  brain  and  not  his  brain  that  is  using  his  body. 

"With  the  average  man  one  meets,  his  body  wags  his 
brain  when  he  talks,  as  a  dog  wags  his  tail.  The  tongue 
sends  its  roots  not  into  the  brain  but  into  the  stomach. 

156 


LIVING  DOWN  CELLAR  IN  ONE'S  MIND     157 

(Probably  this  is  why  Saint  Paul  speaks  of  it  so  sadly 
and  respectfully  as  a  mighty  member — because  of  its 
roots.) 

The  main  difficulty  a  man  has  in  having  a  new  brain 
track,  or  in  being  original  or  plastic  in  a  process  of 
mind  is  the  way  his  body  tries  to  bully  him  when  he 
tries  it.  The  body  has  certain  tracks  it  has  got  used 
to  in  a  mind  and  that  it  wants  to  harden  the  mind  down 
into  and  then  tumtytum  along  on  comfortably  and  it 
does  not  propose — all  this  blessed  meat  we  carry  around 
on  us,  to  let  us  think  any  more  than  can  be  helped. 

I  saw  some  wooden  flowers  in  a  florist's  window  on 
The  Avenue  the  other  day — four  or  five  big  blossoms 
six  inches  across — real  flowers  that  had  been  taken  from 
the  edge  of  a  volcano  in  South  America — real  flowers 
that  had  chemically  turned  to  wood — (probably  from 
having  gas  administered  to  them  by  the  volcano!) — and 
I  stood  there  and  looked  at  them  thinking  how  curious 
it  was  that  spiritual  and  spirited  things  like  flowers 
instead  of  going  out  and  fading  away  like  a  spirit,  had 
died  into  solid  wood  in  that  way.  Then  I  turned  and 
walked  down  the  street,  watching  the  souls  and  bodies  of 
the  people  and  the  people  were  not  so  different  many  of 
them  as  one  looked  into  their  faces,  from  the  wooden 
flowers,  and  I  could  not  help  seeing,  of  course,  no  one 
can — what  their  bodies — thousands  of  them — were  ap- 
parently doing  to  their  souls.  After  all  the  wooden 
flowers  were  not  really  much  queerer  for  flowers  than 
the  people — many  of  them — were  for  people. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  freedom  and  the  plas- 
ticity of  the  human  mind,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
spiritual  mastery,  of  securing  new  brain  tracks  in  men 
and  women  and  the  consciousness  of  power,  of  mobilizing 


158      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

the  body  and  the  soul  both  on  the  instant  for  the  busi- 
ness of  living,  it  is  not  a  little  discouraging  after  people 
are  twenty-one  years  old  to  watch  what  they  are  letting 
their  bodies  do  to  them. 

Left  to  itself  the  body  is  for  all  practical  purposes  so 
far  as  the  mind  is  concerned  a  petrifaction-machine,  a 
kind  of  transcendental  concrete  mixer  for  pouring  one's 
soul  in  with  some  Portland  Cement  and  making  one's 
living  idea  over  into  matter,  that  preserve  them  and 
statuefy  them  in  one — just  as  they  are.  Unless  great 
spiritual  pains  are  taken  to  keep  things  moving,  the  body 
operates  practically  as  a  machine  for  petrifying  spiritual 
experiences,  mummifying  ideas  or  for  putting  one's  spir- 
itual experiences  on  to  reels  and  nerves  that  keep  going 
on  forever. 

There  is  ground  for  belief  (and  this  is  what  I  am  try- 
ing to  have  a  plan  to  meet,  in  these  chapters)  that  the 
reason  that  most  of  us  find  talking  with  people  and  argu- 
ing with  them  and  trying  to  change  their  minds  so  un- 
satisfactory, is  that  we  are  not  really  thorough  with 
them.  What  we  really  need  to  do  with  people  is  to 
go  deeper,  excavate  their  sensory  impressions,  play  on 
their  subconscious  nerves,  use  liver  pills  or  have  a  kidney 
taken  out  to  convince  them.  Talk  with  almost  any  man 
of  a  certain  type,  no  matter  what  he  is,  a  banker,  a  law- 
yer,  or  a  mechanic,  after  he  is  thirty  years  old,  and  his 
mind  cannot  really  be  budged.  He  is  not  really  listen- 
ing to  you  when  you  criticize  him  or  differ  with  him. 

The  soul — the  shrewder  further-sighted  part  of  a  man, 
up  in  his  periscope  has  a  tendency  to  want  to  think 
twice,  to  make  a  man  value  you  and  like  you  for  criti- 
cizing him  and  defend  himself  from  you  by  at  least 
knowing  all  you  know  and  keep  still  and  listen  to  you 


LIVING- DOWN  CELLAR  IN  ONE'S  MIND     159 

until  he  does,  but  his  body  all  in  a  flash  tries  to  keep 
him  from  doing  this,  hardens  over  his  mind,  claps  itself 
down  with  its  lid  of  habit  over  him.  Then  he  auto- 
matically defends-  himself  with  you,  starts  up  his  anger- 
machine,  and  nothing  more  can  be  said. 

"What  a  man  does  his  not-listening  with  is  not  with  his 
soul,  but  with  his  machine.  The  very  essence  of  anger  is 
that  it  is  unspirited  and  automatic.  The  spirited  man  is 
the  man  who  has  the  gusto  in  him  to  listen,  in  spite  of 
himself  to  what  his  fists  and  his  stomach  do  not  want  to 
let  him  hear. 

Of  course  when  a  man  keeps  up  a  thing  of  this  sort 
for  a  few  years — say  for  twenty  or  thirty  years — the 
inevitable  happens  and  one  soon  sees  why  it  is  that  the 
majority  of  people — even  very  attractive  people  one 
goes  around  talking  with  and  living  with,  after  thirty 
years,  become  just  splendid  painted-over  effigies  of  them- 
selves. One  has  no  new  way  of  being  fond  of  them.  One 
looks  for  nothing  one  has  not  had  before.  They  go  about 
— even  the  most  elegant  of  them — thinking  with  their 
stomachs. 

Thoughts  they  get  off  to  us  sweetly  and  unconsciously 
as  if  they  were  fresh  from  heaven — as  if  they  had  just 
been  caught  passing  from  the  music  of  the  spheres,  are 
all  handed  up  to  them  on  dumb  waiters  from  below. 


V 

BEING  HELPED  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS 

MOST  of  us  feel  that  the  national  crisis  that  lies 
just  ahead  calls  in  a  singular  degree  for  new  and 
creative  ideas  and  brain  paths,  both  for  our  leaders  and 
our  people. 

We  realize — whatever  our  personal  habits  may  be 
that  the  great  mass  of  the  driving  ahead  that  is  to  be 
done  in  this  nation  in  its  new  opportunity,  must  come 
whether  in  business,  invention  or  affairs,  from  picked 
men  here  and  there  in  every  business  and  in  every  call- 
ing, who  insist  on  thinking  with  their  heads  instead  of 
with  their  stomachs. 

The  question  of  how  these  men  who  seem  to  strike 
out,  who  seem  to  do  more  of  their  thinking  above  the 
navel  than  others,  manage  to  do  it — the  question  of 
how  other  people — a  hundred  million  people  can  be  got 
to  follow  in  these  new  brain  tracks  for  a  nation — these 
new  ways  for  a  nation  to  get  its  way,  is  a  question  of 
such  immediate  personal  and  national  concern  to  all  of 
us,  that  I  would  like  to  try  to  consider  for  a  little  what 
can  be  done  toward  giving  new  brain  tracks  to  the  na- 
tion and  what  kind  of  people  can  do  it. 

The  men  who  do  it,  who  are  going  to  begin  striking 
down  through  the  automaton  in  all  of  us,  are  going  to 
begin  taking  hold  of  people's  minds  and  re-routing  and 
recoordinating  their  ideas  and  are  going  to  be  the  more 

160 


BEING  HELPED  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS     161 

important  and  most  typical  men  of  our  time.  The  man 
I  know  who  comes  nearest  to  doing  it,  to  practicing  the 
new  profession  of  being  a  lawyer  backward,  who  has 
a  technique  for  giving  his  clients  real  inspirations  in 
believing  what  they  do  not  like  to  believe  about  them- 
selves, in  seeing  through  themselves,  is  F.  Mathias  Alex- 
ander, in  the  extraordinary  work  he  is  doing  in  London, 
for  people  in  the  way  of  reeducating  and  recoordinating 
their  bodies. 

I  took  home  from  a  bookshop  one  day  not  long  ago, 
after  reading  an  article  about  it  by  Professor  James 
Harvey  Robinson  in  the  Atlantic,  Mr.  Alexander's  quite 
extraordinary  book,  which  after  starting  off  with  an 
introduction  by  Professor  John  Dewey,  of  Columbia, 
leads  one  into  a  new  world,  to  the  edge,  almost  the 
precipitous  edge  of  a  new  world. 

I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  deepest  and  most 
penetrating  knowledge  of  that  curious  and  delicate  blend 
of  spirit  and  clay  we  call  a  human  being,  and  the  most 
masterful  technique  for  getting  conscious  control  of  it 
and  of  the  helpless  civilization  in  which  it  still  is  trying 
to  live,  arc  going  to  be  found  before  many  years  to  be 
in  the  brain  and  the  hand  of  Mathias  Alexander.  It 
is  hard  to  keep  from  writing  a  book  about  him  when  one 
thinks  of  him,  but  as  I  cannot  write  a  book  about  him 
in  the  middle  of  this  one,  I  am  going  to  touch  for  a 
moment  on  the  principle  Alexander  employs  in  break- 
ing through  new  brain  tracks  in  persons,  and  then  try 
to  apply  the  same  principles  to  breaking  through  new 
brain  tracks  for  a  nation. 

What  Mr.  Alexander  does  with  people  I  have  already 
hinted  at  in  what  I  have  said  about  our  having  a  new 
profession  in  America — the  profession  of  being  a  lawyer 


back-ward.  Of  course  Mr.  Alexander  could  not  say  of 
himself  that  he  was  in  the  profession  of  being  a  lawyer 
backward,  but  he  does  practically  the  same  thing  in  his 
field  that  a  lawyer  backward  would  do.  He  makes  it 
his  business  to  change  people 's  minds  for  them  instead  of 
petting  their  minds  and  he  does  the  precise  thing  I  have 
in  mine  except  that  he  confines  himself  in  doing  it  to 
what  he  calls  psycho-mechanics — to  a  single  first  relation 
in  which  a  man's  mind  needs  to  be  changed — the  rela- 
tion of  a  man's  mind  to  his  body. 

If  a  man's  mind  gets  his  body  right,  it  will  not  need 
to  be  changed  about  many  other  things  in  which  it  is 
wrong.  The  first  thing  a  man 's  mind  should  be  changed 
about  usually  is  his  body. 

This  is  the  principle  upon  which  Mathias  Alexander 
in  the  very  extraordinary  work  he  is  doing  in  London, 
proceeds. 

When  you  are  duly  accepted  as  a  client  and  have  duly 
given  credentials  or  shown  signs  that  you  want  all  the 
truth  about  yourself  that  you  can  get  no  matter  how  it 
hurts,  or  how  it  looks,  you  present  yourself  at  the  ap- 
pointed time  in  Alexander's  office,  or  studio,  or  labora- 
tory, or  operating  room — whatever  the  name  may  be  you 
will  feel  like  calling  it  by,  before  you  are  finished,  and 
Alexander  stands  you  up  before  the  back  of  a  chair. 
Then  he  takes  you  in  his  hands — his  very  powerful, 
sensitive  and  discerning  hands  and  begins — quite  liter- 
ally begins  reshaping  you  like  Phidias.  You  begin  to 
feel  him  doing  you  off  as  if  you  were  going  to  be  somr 
new  beautiful  living  statue  yourself  before  very  long 
probably. 

Then  he  stands  off  from  you  a  minute,  takes  a  long 
deep  critical  gaze  at  you — just  as  Phidias  would,  studies 


BEING  HELPED  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS     163 

the  poise  and  the  stresses  of  your  body,  X-rays  down 
through  you  with  a  look — through  you  and  all  your  inner 
workings  from  the  top  of  your  head  to  the  soles  of 
your  feet. 

Then  he  lays  hands  on  you  once  more  and  works  and 
you  feel  him  working  slowly  and  subtly  on  you  once 
more,  all  the  while  giving  orders  to  you  softly  not  to 
help  him,  not  to  butt  in  soul  and  body  on  what  he  is 
doing  to  them  with  your  preconceived  ideas — ideas  he 
is  trying  to  cure  you  of,  of  what  you  think  you  think 
when  you  are  thinking  with  what  you  suppose  is  your 
mind,  and  what  you  suppose  you  are  doing  with  what 
you  suppose  is  your  body.  In  other  words,  he  gives 
you  most  strenuously  to  understand  that  the  one  helpful 
thing  that  you  can  do  with  what  you  call  your  mind 
or  what  you  call  your  body  is  to  back  away  from  them 
both  all  you  can.  As  it  is  you  and  your  ideas  mostly 
that  are  what  is  the  matter  with  your  mind  and  body, 
and  with  the  way  you  admit  they  are  not  getting  on  to- 
gether, Alexander's  first  lessons  with  you  you  find  are 
largely  occupied  in  getting  your  mind — your  terrible 
and  beautiful  mind  which  does  such  queer  things  to  you, 
to  back  away.  What  he  really  wants  of  you  is  to  have 
you  let  him  make  a  present  to  you  outright  of  certain 
new  psycho-physical  experiences,  which  he  cannot  pos- 
sibly get  in,  if  you  insist  on  slipping  yours  in  each 
time  instead.  So  he  keeps  working  on  you,  you  all  the 
while  trying  to  help  in  soul  and  body  by  being  as  much 
like  putty — a  kind  of  transcendental  putty  as  you  can, 
or  as  you  dare,  without  falling  apart  before  your  own 
eyes.  Then  when  you  have  removed  all  obstructions  and 
preconceptions  in  your  own  mind — and  will  stop  pre- 
venting him  from  doing  it,  he  places  your  body  in  an 


164      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

entirely  new  position  and  subjects  you  to  a  physical 
experience  in  sitting,  standing  and  walking,  you  have 
never  dreamed  you  could  have  before. 

This  goes  on  for  as  many  sittings  as  are  necessary 
and  until  you  walk  out  of  the  studio  or  the  operating 
room  during  the  last  lessons  feeling  like  somebody  else — 
like  somebody  else  that  has  been  lent  to  you  to  be — 
somebody  else  strangely  and  inextricably  familiar  that 
you  will  be  allowed  to  wear  or  be  or  whatever  it  is  for 
the  rest  of  your  life.  Incidentally  you  are  somewhat 
taller,  your  whole  body  is  hung  on  you  in  a  new  way, 
a  mile  seems  a  few  steps,  stairs  are  like  elevators,  you 
find  yourself  believing  ideas  you  believed  were  impossi- 
ble before,  liking  people  you  thought  were  impossible 
before — even  including  very  conveniently  much  of 
the  time,  yourself.  He  has  changed  your  mind  about 
your  body.  You  are  no  longer  fooled  about  what  you  are 
actually  doing  with  your  subconscious  or  what  it  is 
actually  doing  with  you. 

It  is  not  a  psychic  process  ignoring  mechanical  facts 
in  the  mind,  nor  a  purely  physical  process  ignoring  the 
psychic  facts  in  the  body.  It  is  a  putting  of  the  facts 
in  a  man's  mind  and  the  facts  in  his  body  inextricably 
together  in  his  consciousness — as  they  should  be,  in 
that  he  is  no  longer  letting  himself  be  fooled  by  his  sub- 
consciousness,  swings  free,  and  feels  able  to  stop  when 
he  is  being  fooled  about  himself. 

I  have  been  reading  over  this  chapter  and  all  I  can 
say  to  my  readers  is,  as  a  substitute  for  leaving  it  out, 
that  I  hope  it  sounds  to  them  like  a  fairy  story.  I  like 
to  think  when  I  am  going  on  from  chapter  to  chapter 
in  a  book — I  like  to  keep  thinking  of  my  readers  how 
rational  they  are.  The  principles  underlying  what  Mr. 


BEING  HELPED  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS     165 

Alexander  does  with  new  brain  tracks  and  what  I  am 
trying  to  do  can  be  discussed  in  this  book.  The  facts 
can  be  looked  up  and  are  suitable  subjects  not  for  books 
but  for  affidavits. 


VI 

REFLECTIONS   ON   THE   STAIRS 

IT  is  a  not  unfamiliar  experience  for  a  man  to  go  to  a 
dentist,  get  into  a  chair  and  point  to  a  toothache  in 
the  upper  right  or  northeast  corner  of  his  mouth  and 
have  the  dentist  tell  him  that  the  toothache  he  thinks 
he  is  having  there  is  really  in  the  root  of  a  tooth  in  the 
right  lower  or  southwest  corner.  Then  he  pulls  the 
southwest  corner  tooth  and  the  northeast  corner  tooth- 
ache is  over. 

(These  figures  or  rather  points  of  the  compass  may  not 
be  literally  right,  but  the  fact  that  they  point  to  is.) 
Nearly  every  man  has  had  things  happen  to  him  not 
very  different  from  this.  You  have  a  bad  lameness  in 
your  right  knee  and  the  wise  man  you  go  to,  tells  you 
that  you  are  deceived  about  the  real  trouble  being  in 
your  right  knee,  calls  your  attention  to  a  place  three 
and  a  half  feet  off  way  up  on  the  other  side  of  you, 
says  you  should  have  a  gold  filling  put  in  a  tooth  there 
and  your  right  knee  will  get  well. 

"What  seems  to  be  true  of  people  is  that  though  in  a 
less  glaring  and  more  subtle  fashion,  there  are  very  few 
of  us  who  are  not  subject  either  all  or  part  of  the  time 
to  more  or  less  important  and  quite  unmanageable  illu- 
sions about  things  with  which  we  are  supposed  to  be — 
if  anybody  is — the  most  intimately  acquainted.  One 
keeps  hearing  every  few  days  almost,  lately,  of  ho\r 

166 


REFLECTIONS  ON  THE  STAIRS  167 

people's  inner  organs  are  not  doing  what  they  think 
they  are,  of  how  very  often — even  the  most  important  of 
them  have  been  mislaid — a  colon  for  instance  being  al- 
lowed to  do  its  work  three  inches  lower  than  it  ever 
ought  to  be  allowed  to  try,  and  all  manner  of  other 
mechanical  blunders  that  are  being  made,  grave  mechan- 
ical inconveniences  which  are  being  daily  put  up  with 
by  people,  when  they  move  about  or  when  they  lie  down, 
of  which  they  have  not  the  slightest  idea. 

The  sensory  impressions  of  what  is  really  happening 
to  us,  of  where  it  is  happening  and  how  and  why  are 
full — in  many  people  of  glaring  and  not  infrequently 
dangerous  illusions,  but  these  physical  illusions  which 
we  have  are  reflected  automatically  in  our  spiritual  and 
intellectual  ones.  All  kinds  of  false  ideas  people  have 
about  one  another  which  we  are  not  seeing  about  us  on 
every  hand,  false  philosophies  and  religions,  heresy 
trials,  lockouts  and  strikes — all  the  irrational  things  peo- 
ple say  and  do  to  each  other  thousands  of  miles  away 
are  being  produced  by  the  way  people  are  being  fooled 
by  their  own  precious  insides.  Each  man  is  doing  things 
that  are  unfair  and  wrong  thousands  of  miles  away, 
because  he  is  off  on  his  facts  as  to  what  is  going  on  the 
first  few  feet  off,  because  the  first  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  consciousness  which  have  been  assigned  to 
him  to  know  about  personally  and  attend  to  personally 
he  is  letting  himself  be  fooled  with  every  day. 

A  man  who  is  being  fooled  near  by,  regularly  all  the 
time,  fooled  from  the  sole  of  his  poor  tired  feet  to  the 
poor  helpless  nib  at  the  top  of  him  which  he  calls  his 
head,  is  naturally  hard  to  argue  with  about  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  or  the  League  of  Nations.  Reforms 
and  reformers  which  overlook  these  facts  must  not  be 


168      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

surprised  if  they  seem  to  some  of  us  a  little  superficial. 

Of  course  the  moral  of  all  this  is — as  regards  changing 
society  or  persuading  and  convincing  persons,  get  down 
to  first  principles.  Stop  flourishing  around  "with  fine 
and  noble  philosophies  and  phrases  on  the  surface  of 
men's  souls.  See  that  their  souls  and  their  bodies  are 
both  intricately  divinely  stupendously  blended  together 
and  get  at  them  both  together.  If  you  are  arguing  with 
a  man  and  do  not  make  much  headway,  stop  arguing 
with  him.  Cut  out  his  tonsils. 

Or  it  may  be  something  else.  Or  send  him  to  Alex- 
ander and  have  his  back  ironed  out,  if  necessary  so  that 
his  tonsils  will  work  as  they  are. 

Then  argue  with  him  afterwards  and  quote  Shake- 
speare and  the  Bible  to  him,  stroke  his  soul  and  see  how 
it  works. 


VII 

HELPING  OTHER  PEOPLE  UP  THE  CELLAR  STAIRS 

IT  is  getting  almost  dangerous  to  talk  to  me.     I  lay 
violent  hands  on  people,  when  they  disagree  with  me 
and  send  them  to  Alexander. 

Everybody,  anybody,  my  wife,  my  pastor,  every  now 
and  then  an  editor,  whole  shoals  of  publishers. 
I  think  what  it  would  be  like  for  us  all,  to  ship  The 
United  States  Senate  in  a  body  to  him.  On  every  side 
it  keeps  coming  to  me  that  the  short,  quick  and  thorough 
way  for  me  to  install  my  idea,  to  get  my  idea  started 
and  to  install  my  idea  of  new  brain  tracks,  new  ways 
for  this  nation  to  get  its  way  and  deserve  its  way,  is 
to  have  people  the  minute  they  don't  agree  with  me, 
alexandered,  at  once. 

Here  is  this  book  for  instance.  The  proper  course  for 
me  to  take  to  get  a  man  to  accept  the  new  brain  track 
in  it,  is  to  send  him  a  copy  of  the  book  to  say  yes  or 
no  to.  Then  if  he  does  not  agree  with  me  and  I  am 
tempted  to  argue  with  him,  I  will  drop  the  matter  with 
him  at  once,  send  him  to  Alexander,  have  Alexander 
set  him  in  a  chair,  tap  him  on  the  back,  poke  him 
thoughtfully,  psycho-mechanically  in  the  ribs,  unlimber 
his  mind  from  his  body,  untangle  him  psycho-physically, 
put  him  in  shape  so  that  he  can  think  free,  listen  without 
obsessions  and  mental  automatism — that  is,  get  him  so 

169* 


170      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

s 

that  he  can  set  his  mind  on  a  subject  instead  of  setting 
his  stomach  on  it,  and  then  I  will  ask  him  to  read  my 
book  again. 

In  the  meantime,  of  course,  I  should  be  going  to  Alex- 
ander and  rewriting  the  book. 

By  the  time  the  gentleman  was  cured  I  would  have  a 
cured  book  to  send  him,  we  would  both  be  in  a  position 
to  believe  what  we  don't  want  to  believe,  to  listen  to 
each  other  indefinitely  and  we  would  be  in  a  position 
to  do  team  work  together  at  once  and  take  steps  to  in- 
stall new  brain  tracks  for  nations  immediately. 

This  brings  me  to  the  two  horns  of  my  dilemma. 

In  installing  new  brain  tracks  for  nations  it  is  not 
practicable  for  me  to  take  up  people  who  disagree  with 
me — say  a  hundred  million  people  or  so  and  ship  them 
to  Alexander  in  London  and  have  them  done  over  by 
Alexander. 

What  is  the  best  possible  substitute  arrangement  that 
can  be  made  for  having  a  whole  nation  put  into  perfect 
psycho-mechanical  shape  by  Alexander  so  that  it  will 
take  the  first  new  brain  tracks  kindly? 

The  principles  for  giving  people  new  brain  tracks  to- 
ward their  own  bodies  which  Mr.  Alexander  has  so  suc- 
cessfully demonstrated,  are  the  same  principles  which 
I  have  been  trying  for  a  long  time  to  express  and  apply 
to  ideas  and  to  all  phases  of  the  personal  and  the  na- 
tional life. 

Where  I  have  been  studying  for  years  as  an  artist,  the 
art  of  changing  my  own  mind  and  other  people's  about 
ideas,  of  working  out  new  spiritual  experiences  for  my- 
self and  other  people,  Alexander  in  his  workroom  in 
London  has  been  engaged  in  changing  people's  minds 


HELPING  OTHER  PEOPLE  UP  THE  STAIRS     171 

toward  their  bodies,  in  giving  men  new  brain  tracks 
toward  their  own  bodies. 

It  is  obvious  that  these  principles — Alexander's  prin- 
ciples for  installing  new  physical  experiences  and  mine 
for  installing  new  spiritual  ones,  must  be  if  they  are 
fundamental  or  are  worth  anything,  the  same. 

My  own  feeling  is  that  if  anybody  can  go  to  Alexander 
and  can  be  done  over  by  Alexander  personally  in  London 
that  is  the  best  thing  to  do.  But  it  is  inconvenient  for 
a  hundred  million  people  to  crowd  into  Alexander's 
office  in  London,  and  it  is  comparatively  convenient 
and  roomy  for  a  hundred  million  people  if  they  want 
to,  to  crowd  into  a  book.  Before  giving  the  principles, 
I  would  like  to  state  the  question — "What  are  the  steps 
we  all  can  use — those  of  us  who  are  not  Alexander — to 
install  new  brain  tracks  in  this  nation? 

The  principles  upon  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  new 
brain  tracks  for  this  nation  should  be  installed  and  which 
I  would  like  to  deal  with  are  these : 

First.  Get  people  first  to  recognize  with  regard  to 
new  brain  tracks,  the  fact  that  they  do  not  want  them. 

Second.  Get  their  attention  to  what  people  with  new 
brain  tracks  seem  to  be  able  to  do  in  the  way  of  getting 
in  our  present  moving  world,  the  things  they  want. 
People  go  to  Alexander  and  ask  him  for  new  brain 
tracks.  Something  corresponding  to  this  has  to  be  got 
from  people  before  offering  them  new  brain  tracks  in  a 
convention  or  in  a  book. 

Third.  Pick  out  the  people  next  to  the  people  the 
proposed  new  brain  tracks  are  for,  who  seem  to  be  the 
particular  kind  of  people  best  calculated  to  make  the 
necessary  excavations  in  their  brains,  to  loosen  up  ideas, 


172      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

or  any  hard  gray  matter  there  may  be  there,  so  that 
something  can  be  put  in. 

The  fourth  step  when  we  recognize  that  we  want  the 
facts  against  ourselves  and  see  what  we  can  do  with 
them,  is  to  ask  people  to  let  us  have  them. 


VIII 

HELPING   A   NATION   UP   THE   CELLAR  STAIBS 

THE  Air  Line  League  is  a  national  organization  of 
millions  of  American  men  and  women  belonging  to 
all  classes  and  all  social  and  industrial  groups,  who 
become  members  of  the  League  for  the  express  purpose 
of  asking  people  to  help  to  keep  them,  in  their  personal 
and  industrial  relations,  from  being  off  on  their  facts, 
from  being  fooled  by  their  subconscious  and  automatic 
selves. 

Unless  one  is  practically  asked,  it  is  not  an  agreeable 
experience  telling  a  man  how  he  looks,  handing  over  to 
him  the  conveniences  for  his  being  objective, .for  his 
being  temporarily  somebody  else  toward  himself,  and  yet 
if  one  can  persuade  any  one  to  do  it,  it  is  probably  the 
most  timely  and  most  priceless  service  rendered  in  the 
right  spirit,  any  one  man  or  group  of  men  can  ever 
render  another. 

The  best  way  to  secure  the  right  people  for  this  service 
is  to  ask  them.  The  people  who  do  not  need  to  be  asked 
and  who  would  be  only  too  cheerful  to  do  it,  who  are 
lying  awake  nights  to  do  it  to  us  whether  we  want  them 
to  or  not,  are  not  apt  to  do  it  in  a  practical  way. 

The  best  way  to  ask  the  best  people  is  to  place  one- 
self in  a  position,  as  in  joining  the  Air  Line  League, 
where  people  will  feel  asked  without  any  one's  saying 
anything  about  it. 

173 


174      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

This  is  the  first  principle  we  propose  to  follow  in  the 
League.  By  the  act  of  joining  the  League,  by  the  bare 
fact  that  we  are  in  it,  we  announce  that  we  are  askers, 
and  listeners,  that  as  individuals,  and  as  members  of  a 
class,  or  of  our  capital  groups  or  our  Labor  groups, 
we  are  as  a  matter  of  course  open  and  more  than  open 
to  facts — facts  from  any  quarter  we  can  get  them  which 
will  help  to  keep  us  in  what  we  are  doing  from  being 
fooled  about  ourselves. 

Having  agreed  to  our  principle,  whether  as  individuals 
or  groups,  of  being  unfooled  about  our  subconscious  and 
automatic  selves,  who  are  the  best  people  in  a  nation 
constituted  like  ours,  to  unfool  us  the  most  quickly,  to 
get  our  attention  the  most  poignantly,  and  with  the 
least  trouble  to  us  and  to  themselves? 


IX 

TECHNIQUE  FOB  LABOR  IN  GETTING  ITS  WAT 

THE  best  people  to  advertise  a  truth  are  the  people 
the  truth  looks  prominent  on — the  people  from 
whom  nobody  expects  it. 

In  my  subconscious  or  automatic  self  the  decision  has 
apparently  been  made  and  handed  up  to  me,  that  there 
are  certain  books,  I  do  not  need  to  read. 

My  attention  has  never  been  really  got  as  yet,  to  the 
importance  of  my  reading  one  of  Harold  Bell  Wright's 
novels.  But  if  I  heard  to-morrow  morning  that  Henry 
Cabot  Lodge  and  President  Wilson  during  the  last  few 
peaceful  months  had  both  read  through  Harold  Bell 
Wright's  last  novel,  I  would  read  it  before  I  went  to 
bed. 

Or  Judge  Gary  and  Mr.  Gompers.  Any  common 
experience  which  I  heard  in  the  last  few  weeks  Judge 
Gary  and  Mr.  Gompers  had  had,  a  novel  by  Harold 
Bell  Wright  or  anything — I  would  look  into,  a  whole 
nation  would  look  into  it — the  moment  they  heard  of  it — 
at  once. 

The  first  thing  to  do  in  making  a  start  for  new  brain 
tracks  for  America  is  to  pick  out  persons  and  brain 
tracks  that  set  each  other  off. 

Even  an  idea  nobody  would  care  about  one  way  or 
the  other  becomes  suddenly  and  nationally  interesting 
to  us  when  we  find  people  we  would  not  think  would 

175 


176      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

believe  it,  are  believing  it  hard  and  trying  to  get  us 
to  believe  it. 

Suppose  for  instance  that  next  Fourth  of  July  (I  pick 
out  this  day  for  what  I  want  to  have  happen  because 
I  have  so  longed  for  years  to  have  something  strong  and 
sincere  said  or  done  on  it  that  would  really  celebrate 
it) — suppose  for  instance  that  next  Fourth  of  July, 
beginning  early  in  the  morning  all  the  Labor  leaders 
of  America  from  Maine  to  California,  acting  as  one  man 
broke  away — just  took  one  day  off,  from  doing  the  old 
humdrum  advertising  everybody  expects  from  them — 
suppose  they  proceeded  to  do  something  that  would  at- 
tract attention — something  that  would  interest  their 
friends  and  disappoint  their  enemies — just  for  twenty- 
four  hours?  Suppose  just  for  one  day  all  the  Labor 
leaders  instead  of  going  about  advertising  to  them- 
selves and  to  everybody  the  bad  employers  and  how 
bad  employers  a^e  in  this  country  would  devote  the 
Fourth  of  July  to  advertising  a  few  good  ones? 

Then  suppose  they  follow  it  up — that  Labor  do  some- 
thing with  initiative  in  it — the  initiative  its  enemies  say 
it  cannot  have,  something  unexpected  and  original,  true 
and  sensationally  fair,  something  that  would  make  a 
nation  look  and  that  a  hundred  million  people  would 
never  forget? 

What  does  any  one  suppose  would  happen  or  begin 
to  happen  in  this  country,  if  Labor,  after  the  next 
Fourth  of  July,  started  a  new  national  crusade  for  four 
weeks — if  the  fifty  best  laborers  in  the  Endicott  John- 
son Mills  where  they  have  not  had  a  strike  for  thirty 
years  should  go  in  a  body  one  after  the  other  to  a  list  of 
Bolshevist  factories,  factories  that  have  ultra-reactionary 
employers,  and  conduct  an  agitation  of  telling  what  hap- 


TECHNIQUE  FOR  LABOR  177 

pens  to  them  in  their  Endicott  Johnson  mills,  an  agita- 
tion of  telling  them  what  some  employers  can  be  like 
and  are  like  and  how  it  works  until  the  Bolshevist  work- 
men they  come  to  see  are  driven  by  sheer  force  of  facts 
into  being  non-Bolshevist  workmen,  and  their  Bolshe- 
vist or  their  reactionary  employers  are  driven  by  sheer 
force  of  facts  into  being  Endicott  Johnsons,  or  into 
hiring  men  to  put  in  front  of  themselves,  who  will  be 
Endicott  Johnsons  for  them. 

All  that  is  necessary  to  start  a  new  brain  track  in 
industrial  agitation  in  America  to-day  is  some  simul- 
taneous concerted  original  human  act  of  labor  or  capital, 
some  act  of  believing  in  somebody,  or  showing  that  either 
of  them — either  capital  or  labor — is  thinking  of  some- 
body, believing  in  somebody,  and  expecting  something 
good  of  somebody  besides  themselves.  Millions  of  in- 
dividual employers  and  individual  laborers  about  have 
these  more  shrewd,  these  more  competent  practicable  and 
discriminating  beliefs  about  employers  and  employees  as 
fellow  human  beings,  and  all  we  need  to  do  to  start  a 
new  national  brain  track  is  to  arrange  some  signal  gen- 
erous conclusive  arresting  massive  move  together  to 
show  it. 

This  is  the  kind  of  work  the  Air  Line  League  pro- 
poses on  a  national  scale  like  the  Red  Cross  to  arrange 
for  and  do. 

The  common  denominator  of  democracy  in  industry  is 
the  human  being,  the  fellow  human  being — employer  or 
employee. 

The  best,  most  practicable  way  to  make  it  unnecessary 
for  America  in  shame  and  weakness  to  keep  on  deporting 
Bolshevists,  is  to  arrange  a  national  advertisement,  a 
parade  or  national  procession  as  it  were  in  this  country 


178      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

soon,  of  team  work  in  industry  and  of  how — to  anybody 
•who  knows  the  facts — it  carries  everything  before  it. 

The  best  possible  national  parade  or  pageant  would 
be  up  and  down  through  ten  thousand  cities  to  expose 
every  laborer  to  long  rows  of  employers  who  stand  up 
for  workmen,  expose  every  employer  to  long  rows  of 
workingmen  from  all  over  the  country  who  stand  up 
for  employers. 

Of  course  this  is  physically  inconvenient,  but  it  would 
pay  hundreds  of  times  over  to  conduct  a  national  cam- 
paign of  having  laborers  bring  other  laborers  into  line 
and  of  having  employers  shame  other  employers  into 
competence. 

The  best  substitute  for  this  national  demonstration, 
this  national  physical  getting  together  like  this,  is  as 
I  have  said  before,  a  book  read  by  all,  by  employers 
and  employees  looking  over  each  other's  shoulders,  each 
conscious  as  he  reads  that  the  other  knows  he  reads, 
knows  what  he  knows  and  is  reading  what  he  knows. 


TECHNIQUE  FOR  CAPITAL  IN  GETTING  ITS  WAY 

I  SHOULD  hate  to  see  Capital,  in  the  form  of  a  Na- 
tional Manufacturers'  Association,  realizing  the  des- 
perateness  of  the  labor  situation  and  that  something 
has  got  to  be  done  at  last  which  goes  to  the  bottom, 
slinking  off  privately  and  confessing  its  sins  to  God. 

I  would  rather  see  a  confession  of  the  sins  of  Capital 
toward  Labor  for  the  last  forty  years  and  of  its  sins 
to-day  made  by  Capital  in  person  to  Labor. 

God  will  get  it  anyway — the  confession — and  it  will 
mean  ten  times  as  much  to  Him  and  to  everybody  if  He 
overhears  it  being  given  to  Labor. 

Of  course  Labor  has  been  doing  of  late  wrong  things 
that  it  is  highly  desirable  should  be  confessed  and  natur- 
ally Capital  thinks  that  a  good  way  to  open  the  exercises 
would  be  with  a  confession  from  Labor  to  Capital  to  the 
effect  that  Labor  admits  that  Labor  like  the  Trusts  be- 
fore it  had  had  moments  or  seizures  in  which  it  has 
held  up  the  country,  broken  its  word,  betrayed  the  peo- 
ple and  acted  the  part  the  people  hate  to  believe  of  it — 
of  the  bully  and  the  liar. 

Not  only  the  Capital  Group  but  the  Public  Group  feel 
that  a  confession  from  Labor  before  we  go  on  to  arrange 
things  better  is  highly  to  be  desired. 

But  the  practical  question  that  faces  us  is — supposing 
that  what  is  wanted  next  by  all,  is  a  confession  from 

179 


180      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Labor,  what  is  the  practical  way  from  now  on,  to  get 
Labor  to  confess? 

Some  supposing  might  be  done  a  minute. 

Suppose  I  have  a  very  quick  temper  and  five  sons  and 
suppose  the  oldest  one  has  my  temper  and  is  making  it 
catching  to  the  other  sons,  what  would  any  ordinary 
observer  say  is  the  practical  course  for  the  poor  wicked 
old  father  to  take  with  the  boy's  temper  of  which  he 
has  made  the  boy  a  present? 

My  feeling  is  when  my  boy  loses  his  temper  with  me 
at  dinner  for  instance  in  the  presence  of  the  other  boys, 
that  poking  a  verse  in  a  Bible  feebly  out  at  him  and 
saying  to  him,  "He  that  keepeth  his  temper  is  greater 
than  he  that  taketh  a  city,"  would  be  rude.  The  way 
for  me  to  give  him  good  advice  about  losing  his  temper 
is  to  sit  there  quietly  with  him  while  he  is  losing  his, 
and  keep  mine. 

If  Capital  wants  to  get  its  way  with  Labor — and 
thinks  that  the  way  to  begin  with  the  industrial  situa- 
tion in  this  country,  after  all  that  has  happened,  is 
with  a  vast  national  spectacle  of  Labor  confessing  its 
sins,  the  most  practical  thing  to  do  is  for  Capital  to 
give  Labor  an  illustration  of  what  confessing  sins  is 
like,  and  how  it  works. 

The  capitalists  among  us  who  are  the  least  deceived 
by  their  subconscious  or  automatic  minds,  are  at  the 
present  moment  not  at  all  incapable  of  confiding  to  each 
other  behind  locked  doors  that  the  one  single  place, 
extreme  labor  to-day  has  got  its  autocracy  from,  is  from 
them. 

Labor  is  merely  doing  now  with  the  scarcity  of  labor, 
the  one  specific  thing  that  Capital  has  taught  it  to  do 


TECHNIQUE  FOR  CAPITAL  181 

and  has  done  for  forty  years  with  the  scarcity  of  money 
and  jobs. 

It  seems  to  me  visionary  and  sentimental  and  im- 
practicable for  Capital  to  try  to  fix  things  up  now  and 
give  things  a  new  start  now,  by  slinking  off  and  con- 
fessing its  sins  to  God. 

Labor  will  slink  off  and  confess  its  sins  to  God,  too. 

That  will  be  the  end  of-it. 

It  may  be  excellent  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  in  the  present 
desperate  crisis  of  a  nation,  with  the  question  of  the  very 
existence  of  society  and  the  existence  of  business  staring 
us  in  the  face,  it  really  must  be  admitted  that  as  a 
practical  short  cut  to  getting  something  done,  our  all 
going  out  into  a  kind  of  moral  backyard  behind  the  barn 
and  confessing  our  sins  to  God,  is  weak-looking  and 
dreamy  as  compared  with  our  all  standing  up  like  men 
at  our  own  front  doors,  looking  each  other  in  the  eye 
and  confessing  our  sins  to  one  another. 

I  am  not  saying  this  because  I  am  a  moral  person.  I 
am  not  whining  at  thirty  thousand  banks  pulling  them 
by  the  sleeves  and  saying  please  to  them  and  telling  them 
that  this  is  what  they  ought  to  do. 

I  am  a  practical  matter  of  fact  person,  speaking  as  an 
engineer  in  human  nature  and  in  what  works  with 
human  nature  and  saying  that  when  capitalists  and  em- 
ployers stop  being  sentimental  and  off  on  their  facts 
about  themselves  and  about  other  people,  when  they 
propose  to  be  practical  and  serious,  and  really  get  their 
way  with  other  people  they  are  going  to  begin  by  being 
imperfect,  by  talking  and  acting  with  labor,  like  fellow- 
imperfect  human  beings. 

In  the  new  business  world  that  began  the  other  day — 


182      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

the  day  of  our  last  shot  at  the  Germans,  the  only  way  a 
man  is  going  to  long  get  his  way  is  to  be  more  human 
than  other  people,  have  a  genius  for  being  human  in 
business,  for  being  human  quick  and  human  to  the 
point  where  others  have  talent. 


XI 

PHILANDERING   AND    ALEXANDERINO 

BY  philandering  I  mean  fooling  oneself  with  self- 
love. 

By  Alexandering  I  mean  going  to  one's  Alexander 
whoever  he  or  she  or  it  is,  some  one  person — or  some 
one  thing,  which  either  by  natural  gift  or  by  natural 
position  is  qualified  to  help  one  to  be  extremely  dis- 
agreeable to  oneself — and  ask  to  be  done  ove"r — now  one 
subject  and  now  another. 

Nearly  all  men  admit — or  at  least  they  like  to  say 
when  they  are  properly  approached,  or  when  they  make 
the  approach  themselves,  that  they  make  mistakes  and 
that  they  are  poor  miserable  sinners.  Everybody  is. 
They  rather  revel  in  it,  some  of  them,  in  being  in  a  nice 
safe  way,  miserable  sinners.  The  trouble  comes  in  ever 
going  into  the  particulars  with  them,  in  finding  any 
particular  time  and  place  one  can  edge  in  in  which  they 
are  not  perfect. 

This  fact  which  seems  to  be  true  of  employers  and 
employees,  of  capital  and  labor  in  general,  brings  out 
and  illustrates  another  general  principle  in  making  the 
necessary  excavations  in  one's  own  mind  and  other 
people's  for  new  brain  tracks — another  working  prin- 
ciple of  technique  for  a  man  or  a  group  in  a  nation  to 
use  in  getting  and  deserving  to  get  its  way. 

183 


184      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

There  are  various  Alexander  ing  stages  in  the  tech- 
nique of  not  being  fooled  by  oneself. 

Self-criticism. 

Asking  others  to  help — one's  nearest  Alexander. 

Self-confession  to  oneself. 

Self-discipline. 

Asking  others  to  help. 

The  way  to  keep  from  philandering  with  one's  own 
self-love  or  with  one's  own  group  or  party — is  to  look 
over  the  entire  field — the  way  one  would  on  other  sub- 
jects than  being  fooled  by  one's  own  side,  strip  down 
to  the  bare  facts  about  oneself  and  facts  about  others 
for  one's  vision  of  action  and  fit  them  together  and  act. 

In  getting  one 's  way  quickly,  thoroughly,  personally — 
i.e.,  so  that  other  people  will  feel  one  deserves  it  and 
will  practically  hand  it  over  to  one,  and  want  one  to 
have  it,  the  best  technique  seems  to  be  not  only  to  utilize 
self-criticism  or  self -confession,  as  a  part  of  getting  one 's 
way,  but  self-confession  screwed  up  a  little  tighter — 
screwed  up  into  self -confession  to  others. 

I  need  not  say  that  I  am  not  throwing  this  idea  out 
right  and  left  to  employers  with  any  hopeful  notion  that 
it  will  be  generally  acted  on  offhand. 

It  is  merely  thrown  out  for  employers  who  want  to 
get  their  way  with  their  employees — get  team  work  and 
increased  production  out  of  their  employees  before  their 
rivals  do. 

It  is  only  for  employers  who  want  their  own  way  »• 
great  deal — men  who  are  in  the  habit  of  feeling  master' 
ful  and  self-masterful  in  getting  their  own  way — who 
are  shrewd  enough,  sincere  enough  to  take  a  short-cut 
to  it,  and  get  it  quick. 


XII 

THE   FACTORY   THAT  LAY   AWAKE  ALL  NIGHT 

THERE  is  a  man  at  the  head  of  a  factory  not  a 
thousand  miles  away,  I  wish  thirty  thousand  banks 
and  a  hundred  million  people  knew,  as  I  know  him— 
and  as  God  and  his  workmen  know  him. 

Some  thirty  years  ago  his  father,  who  was  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  firm,  failed  in  health,  lost  his  mind  slowly 
and  failed  in  business.  The  factory  went  into  the  hands 
of  a  receiver,  the  family  moved  from  the  big  house  to  a 
little  one — one  in  a  row  of  a  mile  of  little  ones  down  a 
side  street,  and  the  sixteen  year  old  son,  who  had  ex- 
pected to  inherit  the  business  stopped  going  to  school, 
bought  a  tin  dinner  pail  and  walked  back  and  forth 
with  the  tin  dinner  pail  with  the  other  boys  in  the  street 
he  lived  in,  and  became  a  day  laborer  in  the  business  he 
was  brought  up  to  own. 

In  not  very  many  years  he  worked  his  way  tip  past 
four  hundred  men,  earned  and  took  the  right  to  be  the 
President  of  the  business  he  had  expected  to  have  pre- 
sented to  him. 

Eight  or  ten  years  ago  he  began  to  have  strikes.  His 
strikes  seemed  uglier  than  other  people's  and  singularly 
hopeless — always  with  something  in  them — a  kind  of 
secret  obstinate  something  in  them,  he  kept  trying  in 
vain  to  make  out.  One  day  when  the  worst  strike  of  all 
was  just  on — or  scheduled  to  come  on  in  two  days,  as  he 

185 


186      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

looked  up  from  his  desk  about  five  o'clock  and  saw  four 
hundred  muttering  men  filing  out  past  his  windows,  he 
called  in  Jim — into  his  office. 

Jim  was  a  foreman — his  most  intimate  friend  as  a 
boy  when  he  was  sixteen  years  old.  He  had  lived  in  the 
house  next  door  to  Jim's  and  every  morning  for  years 
they  had  got  out  of  bed  and  walked  sleepily  with  their 
tin  dinner  pails,  to  the  mill  together  talking  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  and  of  what/ they  were  going  to 
do  when  they  were  men. 

The  President  had  some  rather  wild  and  supercilious 
conversation  with  Jim,  about  the  new  strike  on  in  two 
days  and  it  ended  in  Jim 's  dismissing  the  President  from 
the  interview  and  slamming  himself  out  of  the  door, 
only  to  open  it  again  and  stick  his  head  in  and  say, 
"The  trouble  with  you,  ^Al,  is  you've  forgotten  you 
ever  carried  a  dinner  pail." 

The  President  lay  awake  that  night,  came  to  the 
works  the  next  morning,  called  the  four  hundred  men 
together,  asked  the  other  officers  to  stay  away,  shut 
himself  up  in  the  room  with  the  four  hundred  men  and 
told  them  with  a  deep  feeling,  no  man  present  could 
even  mistake  or  ever  forget,  what  Jim  had  said  to  him 
about  himself — that  he  had  forgotten  how  he  felt  when 
he  carried  a  dinner  pail,  told  them  that  he  had  lain 
awake  all  night  thinking  that  Jim  was  right,  that  he 
wanted  to  know  all  the  things  he  had  forgotten,  that 
they  would  be  of  more  use  to  him  and  perhaps  more 
use  than  anything  in  the  world  and  that  if  they  would 
be  so  good  as  to  tell  him  what  the  things  were  that  he 
had  forgotten — so  good  as  to  get  up  in  that  room  where 
they  were  all  alone  together  and  tell  him  what  was  the 
matter  with  him,  he  would  never  forget  it  as  long  as  he 


THE  FACTORY  THAT  LAY  AWAKE       187 

lived.  He  wanted  to  see  what  he  could  do  in  the  factory 
from  now  on  to  get  back  all  that  sixteen-year-old  boy 
with  the  dinner  pail  knew,  have  the  use  of  it  in  the  fac- 
tory every  day  from  now  on  to  earn  and  to  keep  the 
confidence  the  sixteen-year-old  boy  had,  and  run  the 
factory  with  it. 

Jim  got  up  and  made  a  few  more  remarks  without  any 
door-slamming.  Fifteen  or  twenty  more  men  followed 
with  details. 

This  was  the  first  meeting  that  pulled  the  factory 
together.  In  those  that  followed  the  President  and  the 
men  together  got  at  the  facts  together  and  worked  out 
the  spirit  and  principles  and  applied  them  to  details. 
The  meetings  wrere  held  on  company  time — at  first  every 
few  days,  then  every  week,  and  now  quite  frequently 
when  some  new  special  application  comes  up.  Nine  out 
of  ten  of  the  difficulties  disappeared  when  the  new  spirit 
of  team  work  and  mutual  candor  was  established  and 
everybody  saw  how  it  worked. 

No  one  could  conceive  now  of  getting  a  strike  in  edge- 
wise to  the  factory  that  listened  to  Jim. 

I  am  not  unaccustomed  to  going  about  factories  with 
Presidents  and  it  is  often  a  rather  stilted  and  lonely 
performance.  But  when  I  first  went  through  this  fac- 
tory with  the  President  that  listened  to  Jim,  stood  by 
benches,  talked  with  him  and  his  men  together,  felt 
and  saw  the  unconscious  natural  and  human  way  con- 
versations were  conducted  between  them,  saw  ten  dol- 
lars a  day  and  a  hundred  dollars  a  day  talking  and 
laughing  together  and  believing  and  working  together, 
it  did  not  leave  very  much  doubt  in  my  mind  as  to 
what  the  essential  qualities  are  that  business  men  to- 
day— employers  and  workingmen — are  going  to  have  and 


188      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

have  to  have  to  make  them  successful  in  producing 
goods,  in  leading  their  rivals  in  business  and  in  getting 
their  way  with  one  another. 

Naturally  as  a  matter  of  convenience  and  a  short  cut 
for  all  of  us,  I  would  like  to  see  Capital  take  what  is 
supposed  to  be  its  initiative — be  the  side  that  leads  off 
and  makes  the  start  in  the  self -discipline,  self -confession 
and  conscious  control  of  its  own  class,  which  it  thinks 
Labor  ought  to. 

Whichever  side  in  our  present  desperate  crisis  attains 
self -discipline  and  the  full  power  in  sight  of  the  people 
not  to  be  fooled  about  itself  first,  will  win  the  leadership 
first,  and  win  the  loyalty  and  gratitude  and  partiality 
and  enthusiasm  of  the  American  people  for  a  hundred 
years. 


The  first  thing  for  a  man  to  do  to  get  his  way  with 
another  man — install  a  new  brain  track  with  him  that 
they  can  use  together,  is  to  surprise  the  man  by  picking 
out  for  him  and  doing  to  him  the  one  thing  that  he 
knows  that  you  of  all  others  would  be  the  last  man  to  do. 

It  looks  as  if  the  second  thing  to  do  is  to  surprise  the 
man  into  doing  something  himself  that  he  knew  that  he 
himself  anyway  of  all  people  in  the  world,  is  the  last 
man  to  do. 

First  you  surprise  him  with  you.  Then  with  himself. 
After  this  of  course  with  new  people  to  do  things,  both 
on  the  premises,  the  habit  soon  sets  in  of  starting  with 
people  all  manner  of  things  that  everybody  knew — 
who  knew  anything — knew  the  people  could  not  do. 

This  is  what  the  President  of  the  factory  not  a  thou- 
sand miles  away  accomplished  all  in  twenty-four  hours 
by  not  being  fooled  about  himself.  He  took  a  short  cut 


THE  FACTORY  THAT  LAY  AWAKE       189 

to  getting  what  he  wanted  to  get  with  his  employees, 
which  if  ten  thousand  other  employers  could  hear  of 
and  could  take  to-morrow  would  make  several  million 
American  wage  earners  feel  they  were  in  a  new  world 
before  night. 


The  thing  that  seemed  to  me  the  most  significant  and 
that  I  liked  best  about  the  President  of  the  Company 
who  listened  to  Jim,  was  the  discovery  I  made  in  a  few 
minutes,  when  I  met  him,  that  unlike  Henry  Ford,  whom 
I  met  for  the  first  time  the  same  week,  he  was  not  a 
genius.  He  was  a  man  with  a  hundred  thousand  dupli- 
cates in  America. 

Any  one  of  a  hundred  thousand  men  we  all  know  in 
this  country  would  do  what  he  did  if  he  happened  on  it, 
if  just  the  right  Jim,  just  the  right  moment,  stuck  his 
head  in  the  door. 

Here's  to  Jim,  of  course. 

But  after  all  not  so  much  credit  to  Jim.  There  are 
more  of  us  probably  who  could  have  stuck  our  heads 
in  the  door. 

The  greater  credit  should  go  to  the  lying  awake  in 
the  night,  to  the  man  who  was  practical  enough  to  be  in- 
spired by  a  chance  to  quit  and  quit  sharply  in  his  own 
business,  being  fooled  by  himself  and  who  got  four 
hundred  men  to  help. 

Incidentally  of  course  though  he  did  not  think  of  it, 
and  they  did  not  think  of  it,  the  four  hundred  men  all 
in  the  same  tight  place  he  was  in  of  course,  of  trying  not 
to  be  fooled  about  themselves,  asked  him  to  help  them. 

Of  course  with  both  sides  in  a  factory  in  this  way 
pursuing  the  other  side  and  asking  it  to  help  it  not  to  be 
fooled,  everything  everybody  says  counts.  There  is  less 


190      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

waste  in  truth  in  a  factory.  Truth  that  is  asked  for 
and  thirsted  for,  is  drunk  up.  The  refreshment  of  it, 
the  efficiency  of  it  which  the  people  get,  goes  on  the 
job  at  once. 


XIII 

LISTENING  TO  JIM 

(A  Note  on   Collective   Bargaining) 

T  WOULD  like  to  say  to  begin  with  that  I  believe  in 
•*•  national  collective  bargaining  as  it  is  going  to  be  in 
the  near  future — collective  bargaining  executed  on  such 
subjects  and  with  such  power  and  limitations  and  in  such 
spirit  as  shall  be  determined  by  the  facts — the  practical 
engineering  facts  in  human  nature  and  the  way  human 
nature  works. 

I  do  not  feel  that  collective  bargaining  has  been  very 
practical  about  human  nature  so  far.  The  moment  that 
it  is,  the  public  and  all  manner  of  powerful  and  im- 
portant persons,  who  are  suspicious  or  offish  or  unrea- 
sonable about  collective  bargaining  now,  are  going  to 
believe  in  it. 

A  book  entitled  "A  Few  Constructive  Reflections  on 
Marriage  "  by  a  man  wTho  had  had  a  fixed  habit  for  many 
years  of  getting  divorces, — a  man  whose  ex-wives  were 
all  happily  married  would  not  be  very  deep  probably. 
A  symposium  by  his  ex-wives  who  had  all  succeeded  on 
their  second  husbands  would  really  count  more.  Most 
candid  people  would  admit  this  as  a  principle. 

The  same  principle  seems  to  hold  good  about  what 
people  think  in  National  Associations  of  Employers  and 
national  associations  of  workingmen  in  labor  unions. 

191 


Thinking  a  thing  out  nationally  on  a  hundred  million 
scale  which  is  being  done  by  people  who  cannot  even 
think  a  thing  out  individually  or  on  a  two-person,  or 
five-person  scale,  is  in  danger  of  coming  to  very  super- 
ficial decisions. 

Capital  has  been  in  danger  for  forty  years  and  labor 
is  in  danger  now,  of  being  fooled  by  its  own  bigness. 
Because  it  is  big  it  does  not  need  to  be  right,  and  because 
it  does  not  need  to  be  right  it  might  as  well  be  wrong 
about  half  the  time. 

The  trouble  with  the  illusion  of  bigness  is  that  it  is 
not  content  with  the  people  who  are  in  the  inside  of  the 
bigness  who  are  having  it.  Other  people  have  it. 

"When  a  man  looks  me  in  the  eye  and  tells  me  with  an 
air,  that  two  times  two  equals  four  and  a  half,  he  does 
not  impress  me  and  I  feel  I  have  some  way  of  dealing 
with  him  as  a  human  being  and  reasoning  with  him. 
But  when  I  am  told  in  a  deep  bass  national  tone  that 
2973432  multiplied  by  2373937  is  9428531904456765328- 
654126178  I  am  a  little  likely  to  be  impressed  and  to 
feel  that  because  the  figures  are  so  large  they  must  be 
right.  At  all  events,  on  the  same  principle  that  very 
few  of  my  readers  are  going  to  take  a  pad  out  of  their 
pockets  this  minute  and  see  if  I  have  multiplied 
2373937  by  2173937  right,  or  if  I  have  even  taken  half 
a  day  off  to  multiply  them  at  all,  I  am  rather  inclined 
to  take  what  people  who  talk  to  me  in  a  deep  bass  seven 
figure  national  tone,  at  their  word. 

Labor  unions  and  trusts  in  dealing  with  the  American 
public  have  been  fooled  by  their  own  bigness  and  have 
naturally  tried  to  have  us  fooled  by  it  a  good  many 
years. 

It  is  a  rather  natural  un-self -conscious  innocent  thing 


LISTENING  TO  JIM  193 

to  do  I  suppose,  at  first,  but  as  the  illusion  is  one  which 
of  course  does  not  work  or  only  works  a  little  while, 
and  does  not  and  cannot  get  either  for  capital  or  labor 
what  they  want  it  does  not  seem  to  me  we  have  time, — • 
especially  in  the  difficulties  we  are  all  facing  together  in 
America  now,  to  let  ourselves  be  fooled  by  bigness,  our 
own  or  other  people's,  much  longer. 

The  difficulties  we  have  to  face  between  capital  and 
labor  are  all  essentially  difficulties  in  human  nature  and 
they  can  only  be  dealt  with  by  tracing  them  to  their 
causes,  to  their  germs,  looking  them  up  and  getting 
them  right  in  the  small  relations  first  where  the  bacilli 
begin,  dealing  at  particular  times  and  in  particular 
places  with  particular  human  beings.  In  the  factory 
that  listened  to  Jim,  no  order  from  a  national  Collective 
Bargaining  Works  could  have  begun  to  meet  the  situa- 
tion as  well  as  Jim  did  and  the  factory  did. 

If  Jim  had  stuck  his  head  in  the  door  by  orders  from 
Indianapolis,  or  if  the  President  of  the  Company  had 
had  a  telegram  giving  him  national  instructions  to  lie 
awake  that  night,  what  would  it  have  come  to? 

I  believe  in  national  or  collective  bargaining  as  a 
matter  of  course,  in  certain  aspects  of  all  difficulties 
between  capital  and  labor.  But  the  causes  of  most  dif- 
ficulties in  industry  are  personal  and  have  to  be  dealt 
with  where  the  persons  are.  The  more  personal  things 
to  be  done  are,  the  more  personally  they  have  to  be  at- 
tended to. 

If  the  women  of  America  were  to  organize  a  Child- 
birth Labor  Union,  say  next  Christmas — and  if  from 
next  Christmas  on,  all  the  personal  relations  of  men  and 
women  and  husbands  and  wives — the  stipulations  and 
conditions  on  which  women  would  and  would  not  bear 


194      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

children  were  regulated  by  national  rules,  by  courtship 
rules  and  connubial  orders  from  Indianapolis,  Indiana, 
it  vrould  be  about  as  superficial  a  way  to  determine  the 
well-being  of  the  sexes,  as  foolish  and  visionary  a  way 
for  the  female  class  to  attempt  to  reform  and  regulate 
the  class  that  has  been  fenced  off  by  The  Creator  as  the 
male  class,  as  the  present  attempt  of  the  labor  class  to 
sweep  grandly  over  the  spiritual  and  personal  relation 
of  individual  employers  and  individual  workmen  and 
substitute  for  it  collective  bargaining  from  Indianapolis. 

There  is  one  thing  about  women.  It  would  never  have 
occurred  to  the  women  of  this  country  as  it  has  to  the 
men  to  get  up  a  contraption  for  doing  a  thing  nationally 
that  they  could  not  even  do  at  home. 

For  every  woman  to  allow  herself  to  be  governed 
from  the  outside  in  the  most  intimate  concerns  and  the 
deepest  and  most  natural  choices  of  her  life  is  not  so 
very  much  more  absurd  than  for  a  man  in  his  business, 
the  main  and  most  important  and  fundamental  activity 
in  which  he  lives,  the  one  that  he  spends  eight  hours  a 
day  on,  to  be  controlled  from  a  distance  and  from  out- 
side. 

The  whole  idea,  whether  applied  to  biology  or  indus- 
try is  a  half  dead,  mechanical  idea  and  only  people  who 
are  tired  or  half  alive,  are  long  going  to  be  willing  to 
put  up  with  it. 

As  the  mutual  education  of  marriage  is  an  individual 
affair, — as  the  more  individualness,  the  more  personal- 
ness  there  is  in  the  relation  is  what  the  relation  itself  is 
for,  the  mutual  education  of  employers  and  employees 
is  going  to  be  found  to  have  more  meaning,  value  and 
power,  the  more  individual  and  personal — that  is  to  say, 
the  more  alive  it  is. 


LISTENING  TO  JIM  195 

All  live  men  with  any  gusto  or  headway  in  them,  or 
passion  for  work,  all  employers  and  employees  with 
any  headway  or  passion  for  getting  together  in  them  are 
as  impatient  of  having  the  way  they  get  together  their 
personal  relations  in  business  governed  from  outside,  as 
they  would  be  in  the  sexual  relation  and  for  the  same 
reasons. 

If  it  was  proposed  to  have  an  audience  of  all  the 
women  in  America  get  together  in  a  vast  hall  and  an 
audience  of  all  the  men  in  America  get  together  in  an- 
other, and  pass  resolutions  of  affection  at  each  other, 
rules  and  bylaws  for  love-strikes  and  boycotts,  and  love- 
lockouts,  how  many  men  and  women  that  one  would 
care  to  speak  to  or  care  to  have  for  a  father  or  mother, 
would  go? 

Only  anaemic  men  and  women  in  this  vast  vague 
whoofy  way  would  either  make  or  accept  national  ar- 
rangements made  in  this  labor-union  way  for  the  con- 
ditions of  their  lives  together. 

And  in  twenty  years  only  anaemic  employers  and 
anaemic  employees  and  workmen  are  going  to  let  them- 
selves be  cooped  up  in  what  they  do  together,  by  con- 
ventions, by  national  committees,  are  going  to  have  eight 
hours  a  day  of  their  lives  grabbed  out  of  their  hands  by 
collective  bargaining  and  by*  having  what  everybody 
does  and  just  how  much  he  does  of  it  determined  for 
him  as  if  everybody  was  like  everybody,  as  if  locality, 
personality  and  spirit  in  men  did  not  count,  as  if  the 
actual  daily  contacts  of  the  men  themselves  were  not 
the  only  rational  basis  of  determining  and  of  making 
effective  what  was  right. 


XIV 

THE  NEW  COMPANY 

I  MET  a  wagon  coining  down  the  street  yesterday, 
saying  across  the  front  of  it — half  a  street  away. 
American  Experience  Co. 

I  wanted  to  get  in. 

Of  course  it  turned  out  to  be  as  it  got  nearer,  The 
American  Express  Co.,  but  I  couldn't  help  thinking 
what  it  would  mean  if  we  had  an  equally  well-organized 
arrangement  for  rapid  transit  of  boxes — boxes  people 
have  got  out  of  or  got  into,  as  we  have  for  conveying 
other  boxes  people  are  mixed  up  with.  (Fixes  were 
called  boxes  when  I  was  a  boy.  "We  used  to  speak  of  a 
man  having  a  difficult  experience,  as  being  in  a  box.) 

The  Air  Line  League  proposes  to  be  The  American 
Experience  Company — a  big  national  concern  for  ship- 
ping other  people's  experiences  to  people,  so  that  unless 
they  insist  on  it,  they  will  have  the  good  of  them  with- 
out having  to  take  their  time  and  everybody  else's 
time  around  them  to  go  through  them  all  over  again 
alone  and  just  for  themselves. 

Of  course  there  are  people  who  tumtytum  along  with- 
out thinking,  who  will  miss  the  principle  and  insist  on 
having  a  nice  private  misery  of  doing  it  all  over  again 
in  their  own  home  factory  for  themselves.  But  there 
are  many  million  people  with  sense  in  this  country- 
people  as  good  at  making  sense  out  of  other  people  as 

196 


THE  NEW  COMPANY  197 

they  are  in  making  money  out  of  them,  and  the  Air 
Line  League  proposes  that  to  these  people  who  have  the 
sense,  when  they  want  them,  when  they  order  them,  ex- 
periences shall  be  shipped.  And  when  they  get  orders— 
they  can  ship  theirs. 

If  some  of  the  experience  the  Labor  unions  in  England 
have  had  and  got  over  having,  could  be  shipped  in  the 
next  few  weeks,  unloaded  and  taken  over  by  the  Ameri- 
cans, anybody  can  see  with  a  look,  ways  in  which  the 
Air  Line  League  or  American  Experience  Company,  if  it 
were  existing  this  minute,  could  bring  home  to  people 
what  they  want  to  know  about  what  works  and  what 
does  not,  what  they  long  to  have  advertised  to  them — 
at  once.  Experiences — or  date  of  experiences  shipped 
from  England  would  not  only  make  a  short-cut  for 
America  in  increasing  production  in  this  country,  lower- 
ing the  cost  of  living,  but  would  give  America  a  chance 
in  the  same  breath  by  the  same  act,  to  win  a  victory  over 
herself  and  to  turn  the  fate  of  a  world. 

What  the  Air  Line  League  proposes  to  do  is  to  act — 
particularly  through  the  Look-Up  Club — as  the  Ameri- 
can Shipping  Experience  Company. 


XT 

THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR 

THIS  book  is  itself — so  far  as  it  goes,  a  dramatization 
of  the  idea  of  the  Look-Up  Club. 

The  thing  the  book — between  its  two  bits  of  pasteboard 
does  on  paper — a  kind  of  listening  together  of  capital 
and  labor,  the  Look-Up  Club  of  The  Air  Line  League 
is  planned  to  do  in  the  nation  at  large  and  locally  in 
ten  thousand  cities — capital,  labor  and  the  consumer 
listening  to  each  other — reading  the  same  book  as  it 
were  over  each  other 's  shoulders,  studying  their  personal 
interests  together,  working  and  acting  out  together  the 
great  daily  common  interest  of  all  of  us.  The  Look-Up 
Club,  acting  as  it  does  for  the  three  social  groups  that 
make  up  The  Air  Line  League  and  having  an  umpire 
and  not  an  empire  function,  operates  primarily  as  a 
Publicity  or  Listening  organization. 

I  might  illustrate  the  need  the  Look-Up  Club  is 
planned  to  meet  and  how  it  would  operate  by  suggest- 
ing what  the  Club  might  do  with  a  particular  idea — 
an  idea  on  which  people  must  really  be  got  together  in 
America  before  long,  if  we  are  to  keep  on  being  a  na- 
tion at  all. 

Millions  of  American  laborers  go  to  bed  every  night 
and  get  up  every  morning  saying : — 

"The  American  employer  is  getting  more  money  than 
he  earns.  We  are  going  to  have  our  turn  now.  Nobody- 
can  stop  us." 

19? 


THE  FIFTY-CENT  DOLLAR  199 

Result :    Under-production  and  the  Fifty-Cent  Dollar. 

The  cure  for  the  American  laboring  man's  under-pro- 
duction and  working  merely  for  money  is  to  get  the 
American  laboring  man  to  believe  that  the  American 
employer  is  working  for  something  besides  money — that 
he  is  earning  all  he  gets,  that  he  is  working  to  do  a 
good  job — the  way  he  is  saying  the  laboring  man  ought 
to  do.  If  the  American  laboring  man  can  be  got  to 
believe  this  about  his  employer,  we  will  soon  see  the 
strike  and  the  lock-out  and  the  Fifty-Cent  Dollar  and 
the  economic  panic  of  the  world  all  going  out  together. 

I  know  personally  and  through  my  books  and  ar- 
ticles hundreds  of  employers  who  look  upon  themselves 
and  are  looked  on  by  their  employees  as  gentlemen  and 
sports — men  who  are  in  business  as  masters  of  a  craft, 
artists  or  professional  men,  who  are  only  making  money 
as  a  means  of  expressing  themselves,  making  their  busi- 
ness a  self-expression  and  putting  themselves  and  their 
temperaments  and  their  desires  toward  others  into  their 
business  as  they  like. 

If  all  emplo}rers  and  all  employees  knew  these  men 
and  knew  what  their  laborers  thought  of  them  and  how 
their  laborers  get  on  with  them  the  face  of  Labor  toward 
Capital — the  face  of  this  country  toward  the  world  and 
toward  itself  and  toward  every  man  in  it  would  be 
changed  in  a  week. 

Suppose  I  propose  to  take  one  of  these  men  and  write 
about  him  until  everybody  knows  about  him,  and  to  de- 
vote the  rest  of  my  life  to  seeing  that  everybody  knows 
these  men,  and  start  to  do  it  to-morrow ;  what  would  be 
the  first  thing  I  would  come  upon? 

The  first  thing  I  would  come  upon  would  be  a  con- 
vention. It  is  one  of  the  automatic  ideas  or  conven 
tions  of  business  men — not  to  believe  in  themselves. 


XVI 

THE    BUSINESS    MAN,    THE    PROFESSIONAL,    MAN,    AND    THB 

ARTIST 

WHY  is  it  that  if  a  professional  man  or  an  artist 
does  or  says  a  certain  thing — people  believe  him 
and  that  if  a  business  man  docs  or  says  precisely  the 
same  thing — most  business  men  are  suspicious? 

"When  I  say  in  the  first  sentence  of  an  article  on  the 
front  page  of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post — as  I  did 
awhile  ago — ' '  I  would  pay  people  to  read  what  I  am  say- 
ing on  this  page," — everybody  believes  me.  As  people 
read  on  in  one  of  my  articles  in  the  Post,  they  cannot 
be  kept  from  seeing  how  egregiously  I  am  enjoying  my 
work.  Anybody  can  see  it — that  I  would  pay  up  to  the 
limit  all  the  money  I  can  get  hold  of — my  own,  or  any- 
body's— to  get  other  people  to  enjoy  reading  my  stuff 
as  much  as  I  do.  Nobody  seems  inclined  to  deny  that 
if  I  could  afford  to — or,  if  I  had  to — I  would  pay  ten 
cents  a  word  to  practically  any  man,  to  get  him  to  read 
•what  I  write. 

Precisely  the  way  I  feel  about  an  article  in  the  Satur- 
day Evening  Post  so  fortunate  as  to  be  by  me — or,  about 
a  book  written  by  g.s.l.,  a  man  I  know  very  well — 

"W.  J. feels  about  a  house  or  about  a  bank  created 

by  W.  J. .  But  if  "W.  J.,  a  designer — contractor — 

a  builder — pretends  he  enjoys  his  creative  work  in 
building  as  much  as  I  enjoy  writing — if  W.  J.,  a  busi- 

200 


BUSINESS,  ART  AND  PROFESSIONAL  MAN     201 

ness  man,  were  to  go  around  telling  people  or  revealing 
to  people  that  he  would  like  to  hire  them  to  be  his  cus- 
tomers by  handing  back  to  them  twenty,  thirty  or  forty 
per  cent  of  his  agreed  upon  profits  when  he  gets  through 
(which  is  what  he  practically  does  over  and  over  again) 
there  are  very  few  business  men  who  would  not  say  at 
first  sight  that  W.  J.  is  a  man  who  ought  to  be  watched. 

And  he  is  too,  but  for  precisely  turned  around  reasons 
most  people  have  to  be  watched  for.  W.  J.  in  designing 
and  constructing  a  house,  or  a  bank  for  a  client,  sets  as 
his  cost  estimate  a  ten  per  cent  maximum  profit  for  him- 
self, as  a  margin  to  work  on ;  aiming  at  six  or  five  per 
rent  profit  for  himself,  on  small  contracts  and  at  a  four, 
three  or  two  and  one-half  per  cent  profit  for  himself  on 
million  dollar  ones.  Changes  arid  afterthoughts  from 
his  clients  in  carrying  out  a  contract  are  inevitable. 
W.  J.  wants  a  margin  on  which  to  allow  for  contingen- 
cies and  for  his  customers'  afterthought. 

The  three  things  that  interest  "W.  J.  in  business  are: 
his  work  on  a  perfect  house,  his  work  on  a  perfect  cus- 
tomer and  his  work  on  making  enough  money  to  keep 
people  from  bothering  his  work. 

A  perfect  house  is  a  house  built  just  as  he  said  it 
would  be  which  comes  out  costing  less  than  he  said  it 
would  cost — possibly  a  check  on  his  client's  dinner  plate 
the  first  night  he  dines  in  it. 

A  perfect  customer  is  a  customer  who  is  so  satisfied 
that  he  cannot  express  himself  in  words  but  who  cannot 
be  kept  from  trying  to — who  cannot  be  kept  from  com- 
ing back  and  who  cannot  be  kept  from  sending  every- 
body to  W.  J.  he  can  think  of. 

The  tendency  of  mean  typical  business  men — even 
men  who  do  this  themselves,  when  I  tell  them  about  a 


202      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

man  like  this,  is  to  wonder  what  is  the  matter  with  the 
man  and  then  wonder  what  is  the  matter  with  me. 

This  is  what  is  the  matter  with  the  country — the  con- 
ventional automatic  assumption  that  millions  of  men — 
even  men  who  are  not  in  business  merely  to  make  money 
themselves — make  in  general,  that  we  must  arrange  to 
run  a  civilization  and  put  up  with  doing  our  daily 
working  all  day,  every  day,  in  a  civilization  in  which 
most  people  are  so  underwitted,  so  little  interested  in 
life,  so  little  interested  in  what  they  do,  that  they  are 
merely  working  for  money. 

If  we  all  stopped  believing  that  this  is  so,  or  at  least 
believe  it  does  not  need  to  be  so,  that  the  country  is 
full  of  innumerable  exceptions  and  that  these  exceptions 
are  and  can  be  and  can  be  proved  to  be  the  rulers  and 
the  coming  captains  of  the  world,  holding  in  their  hands 
the  fate  of  all  of  us — we  would  be  a  new  nation  in  a 
week. 

In  a  year  we  would  increase  production  fifty  per  cent. 

This  has  happened  over  and  over  again  in  factories 
where  this  new  spirit  of  putting  work  first  and  money 
second,  caught  from  the  employers,  has  come  in. 

Naturally,  inasmuch  as  "W.  J.  as  all  people  who  know 
him  know,  has  made  a  very  great  business  success  of 
running  his  business  on  this  principle,  of  making  it  a 
rich,  happy  and  efficient  thing,  and  of  doing  more 
things  at  once  than  merely  making  money — running  a 
business  like  any  other  big  profession,  one  of  the  first 
things  I  think  of  doing  is  to  write  something  that  will 
make  everybody  know  it.  Well,  as  I  have  said,  the  first 
*act  I  come  on  is  that  many  business  men  do  not  ap- 
prove of  believing  in  themselves  or  in  business  or  in 
what  I  say  about  its  being  a  profession,  any  more  than 
they  can  help. 


XVII 

THE   NEWS-MAN 

I   HAVE  recently  come  in  my  endeavors  as  a  publicist , 
as  a  self-appointed,  self-paid  employee  of  the  Ameri- 
can people,  upon  what  seems  to  me  a  very  astonishing 
and  revolutionary  fact. 

I  have  come  to  put  my  faith  for  the  world  in  its 
present  crisis  into  two  principles. 

1.  The  industrial  and  financial  fate  of  America  and 
the  world  turns  in  the  next  few  years — or  even  months, 
on  news — on  getting  certain  people  to  know  in  the  nick 
of  time  that  if  they  do  not  do  certain  things,  certain 
things  will  happen. 

2.  News,  in  order  to  be  lively  and  contagious  must 
not  be  started  as  a  generalization  or  as  a  principle.    To 
make  news  compelling  and  conclusive  one  has  to  say 
something  in  particular  about  somebody  in  particular. 

Here  is  the  fact  I  have  come  on  in  acting  on  these 
principles. 

When  I  find  news  done  up  in  a  man  to  save  a  nation 
with,  if  I  make  everybody  know  him,  the  fact  I  face 
about  my  country  is  this. 

A  generalized — that  is — a  sterilized  idea  is  free.  A 
fertilized  or  dramatized  idea — an  idea  done  up  and 
dramatized  in  a  man  so  that  everybody  will  understand 
it  and  be  interested  in  it,  is  hushed  up. 

203 


204      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

I  am  not  blaming  anybody.  I  am  laying  before  people 
and  before  myself  a  fact. 

Suppose  that  I  think  it  is  stupendously  to  the  point 
just  now  to  advertise  as  a  citizen  or  public  man,  without 
profit  or  suspicion  of  profit  to  myself  and  without  their 
knowing  it,  certain  men  it  would  make  a  new  nation  for 
a  hundred  people  to  know  ? 

Suppose  that  with  considerable  advantages  in  the  way 
of  being  generally  invited  to  write  about  what  interests 
me,  instead  of  indulging  in  a  kind  of  spray  or  spatter 
work  of  beneficial  publicity — instead  of  getting  off  ideas 
at  a  nation  with  a  nice  elegant  literary  atomizer,  I  insist 
on  making  ideas  do  things  and  I  plan  on  having  my  ideas 
done  up  solidly  in  ten  solid  men  who  will  make  the  ideas 
look  solid  and  feel  catching? 

Suppose  inasmuch  as  in  the  present  desperate  crisis 
of  underproduction,  a  man  who  dramatizes — makes  al- 
luring, dramatic  and  exciting  the  idea  of  increased  pro- 
duction or  superproducing,  seems  to  the  point — sup- 
pose I  begin  with  W.  J.  ? 

What  does  anyone  suppose  would  happen  t 


XVIII 
w.  j. 

IF  W .  J .  were  dead,  or  were  to  die  to-morrow,  it  would 
be  convenient.  In  bearing  upon  our  present  national 
crisis  it  would  be  thoughtful  and  practical  of  "W.  J.  to 
die. 

If  "W.  J.  's  worst  enemy  were  to  push  him  off  the  top  of 
the  fortieth  story  of  the  Equitable  Building  to-morrow 
morning  all  I  would  have  to  do  would  be  to  write  an 
article  about  him  in  some  national  weekly,  Saturday 
Evening  Post  or  Collier's,  which  would  be  read  by  four 
million  people. 

But  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  or  Collier's  has  no 
use  for  W.  J.  until  he  is  dead.  It  would  like  to  have, 
of  course,  but  it  would  not  be  fair  to  the  business  men 
who  are  paying  ten  thousand  dollars  a  page  to  be  ad- 
vertised in  it,  for  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  to  let  any 
other  man — any  man  who  is  not  dead  yet,  be  advertised 
in  it. 

This  is  the  reason  for  the  Look-Up  Club,  a  national 
body — the  gathering  together  of  one  hundred  thousand 
men  of  vision  to  advertise  W.  J.  to — who  will  then  turn 
— the  hundred  thousand  men  of  vision — and  advertise 
him  to  everybody. 

Then  other  men,  strategic  men  like  W.  J. — men  who 
are  dramatizing  other  strategic  ideas  will  be  selected 
to  follow  W.  J.  for  the  one  hundred  thousand  men 

205 


206      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

of   vision   to   advertise    to   a   hundred   million   people. 

By  writing  a  book  and  having  my  publisher  distribute 
through  the  bookstores  a  book,  I  would  reach,  at  best, 
only  one  hundred  thousand  people,  and  I  am  proposing 
to  reach  a  hundred  million  people — to  organize  a  hun- 
dred thousand  salesmen  scattered  in  five  thousand  cities 
and  reach  with  my  book,  the  hearts  and  minds,  the  daily 
eight-hour-a-day  working  lives  of  a  hundred  million 
people. 

This  is  what  the  Look-Up  Club  is  for.  It  is  an  or- 
ganized flying  wedge  of  one  hundred  thousand  sales- 
men who  have  picked  each  other  out  for  driving  into  the 
attention  of  a  nation,  national  ideas. 

The  fate  of  America  and  the  fate  of  the  world  at  the 
present  moment  turns  upon  free  advertising  written  by 
men  who  could  not  be  hired  to  do  it — in  books  distributed 
by  a  hundred  thousand  men  who  could  not  be  hired  to 
distribute  them.  We  are  setting  to  work  a  national 
committee  of  a  hundred  thousand  men,  to  unearth  in 
America,  advertise,  make  the  common  property  of  every- 
body the  men  who  dramatize,  who  make  neighborly  and 
matter-of-fact  the  beliefs  a  great  people  will  perish  if 
they  do  not  believe. 


XIX 

THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP 

WE  are  drawing  in  the  next  few  months  in  America 
the  plans  and  specifications  for  a  great  nation 
and  a  new  world. 

"We  want  a  Committee  of  a  Hundred  Thousand. 

"We  are  proposing  to  gather  a  Look-Up  Committee  of  a 
hundred  thousand  men  of  constructive  imagination  in 
business  and  other  callings,  in  ten  thousand  cities,  who 
will  work  out  together  and  place  before  the  people,  plans 
and  specifications  of  what  this  nation  proposes  to  be 
like — a  picture  of  what  a  hundred  million  people  want. 

The  situation  we  are  trying  to  meet  is  one  of  providing 
new  brain  tracks  for  a  hundred  million  people.  It  will 
not  seem  to  many  people,  too  much  to  say  that  the  quick 
way  to  do  this,  is  to  form  a  Club — a  Committee  in  this 
country,  of  a  hundred  thousand  men  to  ask  to  be  told 
about  these  new  brain  tracks,  who  will  then  tell  them 
to  the  hundred  million. 

The  Look-Up  Club  is  a  Publicity  and  Educational  Or- 
ganization for  the  purpose  of  focusing  and  mobilizing 
the  vision  of  the  people  acting  as  a  clearing  house  of  the 
vision  of  the  people — gathering,  coordinating,  pooling 
and  determining  and  distributing  the  main  points  in 
their  order  of  what  the  American  people  believe. 

The  first  subject  we  act  in  our  Publicity  Organization 
as  our  Listening  Conspiracy — our  Cooperative  news-ser- 
vice to  our  members — is  the  subject  of  how  cooperation 

207 


208      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

between  capital  and  labor  works.  Our  first  news-service 
will  be  planned  to  increase  production,  decrease  the  cost 
of  living,  stop  strikes  and  lockouts,  drive  out  civil  war 
and  substitute  cooperation  as  a  means  of  getting  things 
in  American  life. 

Every  man  who  is  nominated  to  membership  in  the 
Look-Up  Club  naturally  asks  four  questions. 

1.  How  can  I  belong? 

2.  What  does  it  cost  ? 

3.  What  do  I  undertake  to  do  for  the  Club  ? 

4.  What  do  I  get — what  does  the  Club  do  for  me? 
The  idea  is  for  each  man  who  is  deeply  interested,  to 

pick  out,  to  nominate  any  fifty  men — I  put  down  for 
instance  on  my  list  Franklin  P.  Lane — among  forty- 
nine  others,  ask  Mr.  Lane  who  the  men  are  he  knows  in 
this  nation,  men  he  has  come  on  in  his  business  in  the 
course  of  twenty  years,  who  are  characterized  either  by 
having  creative  imagination  themselves  or  by  marked 
power  to  cooperate  with  men  who  have  it. 

After  Mr.  Lane  had  given  me  his  fifty,  I  would  ask 
each  of  Mr.  Lane's  fifty  for  their  fifty  and  each  in  turn 
for  their  fifty  until  we  had  covered  the  country  and  had 
picked  out  and  introduced  to  each  other  from  Maine  to 
California  the  men  of  creative  imagination  in  America. 

Other  members  will  of  course  be  nominated  by  mem- 
bers of  the  Air  Line  League  in  their  respective  communi- 
ties and  everybody  who  is  invited  to  nominate  for  the 
Look-Up  section  of  the  Air  Line  League  will  be  asked  to 
nominate  in  three  lists — (1)  those  he  thinks  of  as  rep- 
resenting invention  in  the  nation  at  large,  (2)  those  he 
knows  or  deals  with  in  his  own  business  or  line  of  ac- 
tivity— all  over  the  country,  who  have  creative  imagina- 
tion or  power  of  discovery  and  planning  ideas,  and  (3) 


THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP  20S 

those  he  knows  in  his  own  home-community  that  he  and 
his  neighbors  would  like  to  see  in  the  Look-Up  Club,  on 
the  nation's  honor  roll  of  men  of  vision  in  the  nation 
representing  his  own  community. 

The  cost  is  to  be  determined  by  the  Club,  but  is 
planned  as  a  small  nominal  sum — nominal  dues  for  ex- 
pense of  correspondence  and  conducting  the  activities 
of  the  Club. 

What  a  man  gets  by  joining  the  Club  is  the  associa- 
tion with  two  or  three  thousand  members  from  all  over 
the  land  at  any  given  time  who  will  be  in  the  Club 
headquarters  in  a  skyscraper  hotel  of  its  own,  when  he 
comes  to  New  York  and  the  advantage  of  common  action 
and  common  looking  at  the  same  things  at  the  same  time 
with  the  other  members  of  the  Club,  through  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  Club  by  mail. 

The  Look-Up  Club  Bulletins,  pamphlets  and  little 
books  containing  news  of  critical  importance  and  time- 
liness to  all  members — news  not  generally  known  or  not 
available  in  the  same  concentrated  form  in  the  daily 
press,  will  be  sent  to  all  members  for  their  own  use 
and  for  distribution  to  others  at  critical  times  and  places 
and  with  strategic  persons — labor  unions  and  employers 
and  public  men. 

What  the  Look-Up  Club  does  for  a  man  is  to  give  him 
the  benefit  of  a  friendly  candid  national  conspiracy  be- 
tween a  hundred  thousand  men,  to  get  the  news  and  to 
pass  on  the  news  that  counts  and  to  do  it  all  at  the  same 
time  instead  of  in  scattered  and  meaningless  dabs. 

If  the  thing  each  man  of  a  hundred  thousand  sees  once 
a  year  in  a  little  lonely  dab  of  vision  all  by  himself 
could  be  seen  by  all  of  us  by  agreement  the  same  week 
in  the  year,  we  will  do  the  thing  we  see. 


210      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Anything  we  see  will  have  to  happen.  The  only 
reason  the  thing  we  see  does  not  happen  now,  is  that 
we  make  no  arrangements  to  see  it  together. 

Seen  together,  news  that  looks  like  a  rainbow  acts 
like  a  pile  driver. 

A  man  becomes  a  hundred  thousand  times  himself. 
In  the  Look-Up  Club  what  a  man  gets  for  his  own  use, 
is  hundred  thousand  man-power  news. 

What  does  a  man  when  he  joins  the  Look-Up  Club, 
undertake  to  do? 

Send  in  news  when  he  knows  some,  and  use  news 
when  he  gets  it. 

I  do  not  undertake  to  say  just  what  each  member  of 
the  Look-Up  Club  will  undertake  to  do  with  news  when 
lie  receives  it. 

When  a  man  receives  live  news  which  immediately 
concerns  him  and  his  nation  in  the  same  breath,  the  way 
he  feels  about  it  and  acts  about  it — about  real  news  he 
applies  to  himself  and  to  his  work  and  the  people  around 
him,  will  seem  to  him  to  come,  not  under  the  head  of 
duties  to  the  Club,  but  under  the  head  of  the  things  the 
Club  will  tempt  him  to  do  and  that  he  cannot  be  kept 
from  doing. 

If  a  hundred  thousand  picked  men  in  this  country  in 
all  walks  of  life  all  get  the  same  news  the  same  week, 
and  then  use  the  news  the  week  they  get  it,  and  put  it 
where  other  people  will  use  it,  we  will  all  know  and 
everybody  else  will  know  what  the  Look-Up  Club  is  for. 

We  will  be  carrying  out  in  the  Look-Up  Club  what 
might  be  called  a  selective  draft  of  vision. 

We  will  mobilize  and  bring  to  action  the  vision  and 
the  will  of  the  people. 


XX 

PROPAflANDY  PEOPLE 

I  AM  weary  and  sad  about  the  word  propaganda.  I 
am  weary  of  being  propaganded,  or  rather  of  being 
propaganded  at  and  as  regards  propagandafying  others 
•myself,  or  propagandaizing  them,  whatever  it  is  publi- 
cists and  men  who  are  interested  in  public  ideas  suppose 
they  do,  I  am  sad  at  heart.  There  is  a  prayer  some  one 
prayed  once  one  tired  New  Year's  Eve,  which  appeals 
to  me. 

"Forgive  me  my  Christmases  as  I  forgive  them  that 
have  Christmased  against  me. ' ' 

I  could  pray  the  same  model  outline  for  a  prayer. 
But  for  Christmasing,  substitute  propagandy-izing. 

The  word  somehow  itself  in  its  own  unconscious 
beauty  dramatizes  the  way  I  feel  about  it.  I  have  writ- 
ten many  hundred  pages  of  what  I  believe  about  re- 
formers— about  people  who  are  trying  to  get  other 
people's  attention,  and  about  advertising,  but  the  brunt 
of  what  I  believe  now  is  that  most  people  if  they  would 
stop  trying  to  get  other  people's  attention  and  try  to 
get  their  own,  would  do  more  good. 

The  advertising  in  which  I  believe  is  the  advertising 
that  is  asked  for.  I  believe  in  getting  a  few  million 
people  to  ask  to  be  advertised  to  and  to  give  particulars. 

More  good  would  be  done  this  way  than  by  turning 
the  whole  advertising  idea  around  and  working  it  wrong 
end  to  as  we  do  now. 

211 


212      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

For  instance  at  this  present  moment  I  want  to  know 
everything  about  myself  and  against  myself,  my  ene- 
mies know.  I  do  not  see  why  I  should  put  up  with  my 
enemies  being  the  ones  of  all  others  to  know  things 
against  me  that  if  I  knew  would  be  the  making  of  me. 
What  I  want  to  do  is  to  find  a  way — make  arrangements 
if  I  can,  to  get  them  to  tell  me — tell  me  politely — if 
they  can,  but  tell  me. 

If  every  person,  or  party,  or  group  in  America  to-day 
would  do  this,  Capital,  Labor,  bankers,  socialists,  Ke- 
publicans  and  Democrats,  America  would  quit  being 
merely  a  large  nation  at  once,  and  begin  being  a  great 
one.  People  who  have  organized  to  be  advertised  to 
will  read  advertising  more  poignantly,  even  sometimes 
perhaps  (as  I  would)  more  desperately.  They  will  get 
ninety-three  per  cent  value  out  of  advertising  they  read 
where  now  they  get  three  and  a  half.  Everybody  who 
has  read  advertising  he  has  asked  for  and  advertising 
that  has  butted  in  on  him  whether  or  no  the  same  day, 
and  who  has  compared  for  one  minute  how  he  has  felt 
about  them  and  how  he  has  acted  about  them,  knows  that 
this  is  true. 

It  is  a  platitude. 

A  platitude  that  nobody  has  expressed  and  that  no- 
body has  acted  on  is  a  great  truth. 

What  the  Air  Line  League  is  for,  one  of  the  things 
it  is  for,  is  to  act  on  this  truth. 

Through  the  three  branches,  the  Look-Up  Club,  the 
Try-Out  Club  and  the  Put-Through  Clan,  the  Air  Line 
League  is  an  organization  not  for  asserting  or  for  push- 
ing advertising,  but  for  nationally  sucking  advertising. 
With  its  thirty  million  people  joining  it,  asking  to  be 
advertised  to,  and  giving  particulars,  it  is  to  be  the 
National  Vacuum  Cleaner  for  Truth. 


XXI 

THE  SKILLED   CONSUMERS  OF  PUBLICITY 

THE  trouble  with  the  consumers  of  publicity  is  that 
they  are  not  skilled.     They  are  not  organized  to 
get  what  they  want. 

"We  should  organize  the  Consumers  of  Publicity,  make 
it  possible  for  the  people  of  America  as  readers,  to  be 
skilled  readers  in  getting  what  they  want. 

"We  should  make  arrangements  which  would  be  the 
equivalent  of  organizing  Skilled  Readers'  Labor  Saving 
Unions. 

The  difficulties  of  attaining  a  power  of  national  listen- 
ing together — through  the  press  and  through  pamphlets 
and  books,  are  so  great  that  they  can  only  be  overcome 
practically  and  immediately,  by  our  having  an  organi- 
zation the  members  of  which  join  it  as  they  will  join 
the  Air  Line  League  for  the  express  purpose  not  of  ad- 
vertising — but  of  being  advertised  to. 

The  most  fundamental  activity  of  the  Air  Line  League 
in  the  present  crisis  of  the  nation  is  to  be  the  superim- 
posing upon  the  advertising  of  the  ordinary  kind  we 
already  have,  of  free  advertising  by  men  who  have  cer- 
tain ideas  and  certain  types  of  men  they  want  to  adver- 
tise to  a  specific  twenty  or  thirty  million  people  who  con- 
tract with  them  (as  I  would  have  often  wished  my 
readers  would  contract  with  me)  to  have  these  same 
men  or  types  of  men  and  ideas,  advertised  to  them. 

213 


214      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

It  would  be  hard  to  overemphasize  or  overestimate 
the  power  of  an  organization  that  exists  not  to  advertise 
but  to  be  advertised  to. 

I  say  again — if  I  may  be  forgiven  for  the  still  small 
voice  of  platitude — a  platitude  because  nobody  acts  as 
if  he  believes  it — the  most  effective  advertising  is  ad- 
vertising that  is  asked  for. 


BOOK  IV 

THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  A  NATION'S  GETTING  ITS 
WAY  WITH  OTHER  NATIONS 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ALL  THE  YEAR  ROUND 

IT  would  be  very  convenient  for  the  other  nations  in 
the  world  to-day  if  America — being  the  biggest,  the 
freshest  and  the  most  powerful  after  the  war  and  hav- 
ing the  other  nations  for  the  time  being  most  dependent 
on  it,  could  be  the  one  that  they  felt  most  deserved  to 
lead  them  and  have  its  way  with  them. 

It  is  almost  the  personal  necessity  of  forty  other  na- 
tions to-day  that  America  should  be  a  success,  that 
America  instead  of  instantly  disappointing  the  other 
nations,  should  instantly  prove  itself  worthy  of  the 
leadership  they  would  like  to  place  in  her  hands. 
"America's  success  is  the  world's  success,"  people  keep 
saying.  This  has  a  prettified  and  pleasant  sound — in 
speaking  of  a  great,  or  rather  of  a  big,  nation. 

But  what  of  it?  What  is  the  fact?  What  do  we 
wish  we  could  believe  is  the  fact  ?  What  is  there — either 
in  our  own  interests  or  the  interests  of  others  that  can 
really  be  done  and  done  now  about  the  fact — if  it  is  a 
fact — by  any  real  person  or  body  of  persons  in  America  ? 
As  a  practical  and  not  a  Fourth  of  July  institution, — 
or  rather  as  an  institution  for  celebrating  the  Fourth 
of  July  all  the  year  round,  the  Air  Line  League  looks 
upon  direct  action  to  be  taken  by  the  American  people 
to  meet  the  world's  particular  situation  at  this  time, 
as  follows: 

217 


218      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

If  America  is  to  get  its  way — the  way,  as  we  like  to 
think,  of  democracy  and  freedom,  with  other  nations, 
there  are  certain  things  about  us  the  other  nations  want 
to  know. 

The  other  nations  want  to  know  that  America  has  a 
technique  for  getting  its  way  with  itself. 

The  nation  that  has  the  most  self-control  will  be  the 
nation  that  as  a  matter  of  course  and  of  common  safety 
will  be  asked  in  the  crisis,  by  the  other  nations,  to  take 
the  lead  in  controlling  order,  in  controlling  or  insuring 
the  self-control  of  others. 

The  other  nations  want  to  know — if  they  are  going  to 
let  us  have  our  way  with  them — put  over  what  we  like 
to  call  our  superior  democratic  open  way  upon  them, 
that  we  have  a  vision — a  vision  of  human  nature  and  of 
modern  life  which  is  better,  clearer,  more  practical  and 
timely  than  their  vision. 

The  other  nations  want  to  know, — if  we  are  to  have 
our  way,  that  we  not  only  have  a  vision  of  what  our 
•way  is — a  national  vision,  but  a  technique  for  express- 
ing and  embodying  that  national  vision.  To  deserve  our 
•way  with  them  they  must  know  we  have  a  vision  which 
can  be  proved,  which  is  historic — the  facts  of  which — 
specifications,  dates,  names  and  places,  can  be  placed  in 
their  hands. 

The  other  nations  if  they  are  going  to  let  us  have  our 
way  with  them,  will  want  to  know  by  observation  that 
America  has  not  only  a  vision  and  a  technique  for  em- 
bodying a  vision,  but  that  when  her  vision  proves  to  be 
wrong  (as  during  the  war)  America  has  a  technique  for 
being  born  again. 


II 

THE  VISION  AND  THE  BODY 

I   HAVE  dwelt  already  on  what  a  body  for  the  people 
would  be  like  and  how  it  would  work. 

I  would  now  like  to  touch  on  two  facts — the  fact  that 
there  is  a  particular  and  desperate  need  of  a  vision  for 
the  soul  of  the  American  people  at  this  time,  and  the  fact 
that  the  body  to  express  the  vision  grows  logically  out 
of  what  already  is  and  that  this  body  is  going  to  be  had. 

The  success  of  a  nation  in  getting  its  way  with  other 
nations  turns  on  its  having  a  technique  for  getting  the 
attention  of  other  nations — on  its  getting  connected  up 
with  a  body  through  which  its  spirit  can  really  be  ex- 
pressed. 

The  technique  for  a  nation  getting  the  attention  of 
other  nations  turns  on  a  nation's  getting  its  own  at- 
tention, upon  the  nation 's  becoming  self-conscious,  upon 
its  having  a  conception,  upon  its  having  a  vision  of  action 
developing  within  itself  from  which  a  body  implacably 
comes  forth. 

This  fact  is  not  supposed  to  be  open  to  argument.  It 
is  a  biological  fact — the  mysterious  and  boundless  plati- 
tude of  life.  Everybody  knows,  or  thinks  that  he  thinks 
that  he  knows  it,  but  only  a  few  people  here  and  there  at 
a  time  for  a  short  time,  in  America — inventors,  great 
statesmen,  children  and  lovers  are  ever  caught  acting 
as  if  they  believed  it. 

219 


220      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Everything  about  America  that  is  lively,  or  powerful, 
or  substantial  and  material  begins  in  imaginative  desire, 
in  somebody's  vision  or  somebody's  falling  in  love  and 
becoming  conscious  of  his  own  desire. 

The  first  thing  this  nation  has  to  do  to  have  a  body 
is  to  get  its  own  attention. 

The  reason  that  the  people  of  America  in  the  Red 
Cross  achieved  a  body,  is  that  some  one  had  a  body  for — 
the  vision  that  if  all  the  different  kinds  of  people  we 
had  in  America  who  had  never  dreamed  of  doing  a 
thing  together  before,  could  be  got  together  to  do  one 
thing  together  now  the  world  war  could  be  won. 

This  spectral  and  visionary-looking  idea  somehow  in 
the  Red  Cross,  was  not  only  the  thing  that  started  the 
Red  Cross,  but  it  was  the  daily  momentum,  the  daily 
mounting  up  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  that  made  it  go. 

The  leaders  of  the  Red  Cross — Mr.  Davison  and  the 
men  he  gathered  about  him  had  a  vision  of  what  could 
be  done  which  other  people  did  not  dare  to  have. 

The  secret  of  the  Red  Cross  was  that  it  was  a  vision- 
machine,  a  machine  for  multiplying  one  man's  vision  a 
millionfold,  working  out  in  the  sight  of  the  people  three 
thousand  miles  a  vision  greater  than  the  people  would 
have  thought  they  could  have. 

This  vision  which  the  Red  Cross  had,  which  it  adver- 
tised to  people  and  made  other  people  have,  is  what  the 
people  liked  about  it.  The  people  threw  down  their 
jewels  for  it — for  something  to  believe  about  themselves 
and 'do  with  themselves  greater  than  they  had  believed 
before.  They  threw  down  their  creeds  for  it.  They 
threw  down  their  class  prejudices  for  it — a  huge  buoy- 
ant serious  daily  vision  of  action  in  which  all  classes 


THE  VISION  AND  THE  BODY  221 

and  all  creeds  of  people  could  live  and  dream  and  work 
together  every  day. 

No  more  matter  of  fact  conclusive  demonstration  of 
the  implacable  splendid  brutal  power  of  vision,  of  the 
power  of  vision  to  precipitate  across  three  thousand 
miles  a  body  for  the  souls  and  the  prayers  of  a  people, 
could  be  imagined  than  the  Red  Cross  during  its  great 
days  in  the  war. 

The  Red  Cross  became  capable  of  doing  what  it  did 
because  it  touched  the  imagination  of  the  average  hum- 
drum man  rich  or  poor  and  made  him  think  of  some- 
body besides  himself.  The  Red  Cross  did  this  by  what 
was  practically  an  advertising  campaign,  the  advertis- 
ing of  different  sets  of  people,  to  all  of  the  others. 

The  result  was  what  looked  and  felt  like  a  miracle — 
a  kind  of  apocalypse  of  people  who  have  outdone  them- 
selves. 

Naturally  the  people  liked  it.  And  naturally  people 
who  have  watched  themselves  and  one  another  outdoing 
themselves,  can  do  anything. 

My  own  experience  is  that  when  I  set  out  to  find  the 
real  truth  about  people  whether  it  pets  me  in  my  feeling 
about  them  or  not,  people  turn  out  to  be  incredibly 
alike.  They  are  all  more  full  of  good  than  they  seem 
to  want  me  to  believe.  The  only  difference  is  that  some 
of  them  are  more  successful  in  keeping  me  from  believ- 
ing in  them  than  others. 

I  have  taken  some  satisfaction  in  seeing  in  the  Red 
Cross,  a  nation  backing  me  up  in  this  experience  with 
human  nature  in  America. 


Ill 

THE  CALL  OP  A  HUNDRED  MILLION  PBOPLB 

THE  nearest  the  American  people  have  come  to  get- 
ting their  way  in  other  nations — to  having  a  vision 
and  a  body  with  which  to  do  it  and  deserve  to  do  it — 
is  in  the  Red  Cross,  and  in  our  Food  Distribution.  In 
both  of  these  organizations  we  succeeded  in  getting  the 
attention  of  others  to  what  we  could  do  for  them — and 
with  them — by  getting  our  own  attention  first  and  by 
making  our  own  sacrifice  at  home  first. 

We  were  allowed  to  administer  food  abroad  because 
we  had  shown  self-control  and  sacrifice  about  food  at 
home  and  were  given  headway  in  emergency  and  rescue 
abroad  because  millions  of  people  here  had  a  vision  for 
others  and  gave  a  body  to  their  vision  at  home. 

I  have  been  filled  with  sorrow  over  the  way  millions  of 
men  and  women  in  the  American  Red  Cross,  their  daily 
lives  geared  to  a  great  issue,  living  every  day  with  a 
national  international  vision  suffusing  their  minds  and 
hearts  and  touching  everything  they  said  and  did,  sud- 
denly disappeared  as  the  people  that  they  really  were 
and  that  they  seemed  to  be,  from  sight. 

I  have  never  understood  it,  how  twenty  million  men 
and  women  out  of  that  one  common  colossal  daily  vision 
of  a  world,  almost  in  a  day,  almost  in  an  hour,  across  a 
continent  as  on  some  great  national  spring,  snapped 
back  into  the  little  life. 

222 


223 

I  do  not  know  as  I  would  have  minded  them — three 
thousand  miles  of  them  going  back  into  the  convolutions 
of  their  own  individual  lives,  but  I  have  wished  they 
could  have  kept  the  vision,  could  have  taken  steps  to 
move  the  vision  over,  could  have  taken  up  the  individual 
lives  they  had  to  go  back  to  and  had  to  live,  and  live 
them  on  the  same  level,  and  driving  through  on  the  same 
high  common  momentum  of  purpose,  live  them  daily  to- 
gether. 

The  necessity  of  the  every-day  individual  lives  we  all 
are  interested  in  living — the  necessity  of  the  actual  per- 
sonal things  we  all  are  daily  trying  to  do,  is  a  necessity 
so  much  more  splendid  and  tragic,  so  much  more  vivid, 
personal  and  immediate,  so  much  more  adapted  to  a  high 
and  exhilarating  motive  and  to  a  noble  common  desire 
than  the  rather  rudimentary  showy  stupid  necessity  the 
Germans  thrust  upon  us  could  ever  dream  of  being,  that 
it  is  hard  to  understand  the  way  in  which  the  leaders  of 
the  Red  Cross  in  the  supreme  critical  moment  when  the 
mere  war  with  Germany  was  being  stupendously  precip- 
itated into  forty  wars  of  forty  nations  with  themselves, 
at  the  very  moment  when  with  one  touch  of  a  button 
the  new  vision  of  the  people  could  have  been  turned  on 
instead  of  the  old  one  and  the  hundred  million  people 
stood  there  asking  them,  snapped  off  the  light,  dismissed 
the  hundred  million  people — clapped  them  back  into 
their  ten  thousand  cities  into  the  common  life. 

The  magnificent  self  discovery,  the  colossal  single- 
heartedness  lighting  up  the  faces  of  the  people  whiffed 
out  by  one  breath  of  armistice!  Who  would  have  be- 
lieved it  or  who  can  forgive  it?  ...  The  Red  Cross — 
the  redeemer,  the  big  brother  of  nations,  holding  steady 
the  nerves  of  a  whole  world — not  meeting  the  emergency 


224      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

of  a  whole  world — the  whole  world  yesterday  tightened 
up  into  war,  and  to  day  falling  apart  into  colossal  com- 
plicated, innumerable,  hemming  and  hawing,  stuttering 
Peace ! 

"What  people  used  to  think  wealth  was,  what  they  used 
to  think  might  was,  the  power  of  attracting  the  whole 
attention  of  millions  of  people  is. 

In  the  Bed  Cross  a  hundred  million  people — American 
people,  had  looked  at  the  same  thing  at  the  same  time 
with  their  eyes,  they  had  heard  the  same  thing  at  the 
same  time  with  their  ears  and  they  had  been  doing  the 
same  thing  in  a  thousand  ways  with  their  hands.  In 
the  Red  Cross  the  feet  of  a  hundred  million  people  be- 
came as  the  feet  of  one  man. 

The  Red  Cross  had  hunted  out,  accumulated,  mounted 
up  and  focused  the  attention  of  forty  nations.  It  had 
in  its  hands  the  trigger  of  a  ninety  mile  long  range  gun 
aimed  at  the  spoilers  of  the  world  and  the  day  the 
armistice  begins  we  see  it  deliberately  letting  the  gun 
go  and  taking  up  in  its  hand  at  the  very  moment  the 
real  war  of  the  war  was  beginning,  a  pocket  pistol  in- 
stead. Because  the  war  suddenly  was  everywhere  in- 
stead of  the  north  of  France,  it  reduced  to  a  peace  basis. 
At  the  very  moment  when  it  had  touched  the  imagina- 
tions of  forty  nations,  at  the  very  moment  when  it  had 
people  all  over  the  world  all  listening  to  it  and  believing 
in  it,  at  the  very  moment  when  the  forty  nations  could 
have  been  turned  on  to  any  problem  with  it,  it  let  the 
forty  nations  go. 

If  I  could  imagine  a  hundred  million  people  sitting 
in  a  theater  as  one  man — a  hundred  million  man-power 
man  who  could  not  see  anything  with  his  opera  glas^ 
if  I  were  sitting  next  to  him  I  would  suggest  his  turn- 


THE  CALL  OF  100,000,000  PEOPLE         225 

ing  the  screw  to  the  right  slowly.  I  would  say,  "Do  you 
see  better  or  worse  as  you  turn  it  to  the  right?"  If  I 
found  he  saw  worse  I  would  tell  him  to  turn  it  to  the 
left  and  then  I  would  leave  him  to  try  between  the 
two  until  he  found  it. 

The  day  after  the  armistice,  this  was  the  chance  the 
Red  Cross  had.  It  had  the  chance  to  turn  the  screw 
for  us,  to  avoid  for  us  the  national  blank  look. 

Naturally  after  looking  at  the  stage  in  the  hall  with 
our  national  blank  look,  it  was  not  very  long  before 
everybody  got  up  and  went  out. 

It  was  a  Focns — a  hundred  million  man-power  vision, 
even  if  it  was  only  of  bandages,  that  had  made  America 
a  great  nation  a  few  minutes,  and  not  unnaturally  after 
a  few  weeks  of  armistice  had  passed  by,  keeping  the 
focus,  stopping  the  national  blank  look  has  become  the 
great  national  daily  hunger  of  our  people.  A  hundred 
million  people  can  be  seen  asking  for  it  from  us,  every 
morning  when  they  get  up — asking  for  it  as  one  man. 

To  one  who  is  interested  in  the  economics  of  attention, 
and  especially  in  getting  the  attention  of  nations,  it  is 
one  of  the  most  stupendous  and  amazing  wastes  of  sheer 
spiritual  and  material  energy  the  world  has  ever  known 
— this  spectacle  of  the  way  the  Red  Cross  a  few  months 
ago  with  its  mighty  finger  on  the  screw  of  the  focus 
of  the  world,  with  its  finger  on  the  screw  of  our  na- 
tional opera  glass,  with  its  chance  to  keep  a  hundred 
million  people  from  having  a  blank  look,  let  its  chance 
go. 

The  idea  of  the  Air  Line  League  is  that  it  shall  take 
tip  where  it  stopped,  the  Red  Cross  vision — the  Red 
Cross  spirit. 

The  idea  of  the  Air  Line  League  as  a  matter  of  fact 


226      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

was   first   invented   as   a   future   for   the   Red    Cross. 

The  Eed  Cross  at  the  end  of  the  war  had  said  it 
wanted  a  future  invented  for  it,  and  the  first  form  my 
idea  took  (almost  page  for  page  in  this  book  as  the 
reader  will  find  it)  was  that  this  new  organization  of  a 
body  for  the  people,  I  have  in  mind,  should  be  started 
as  a  New  Division  for  the  Red  Cross. 

But  I  soon  discovered  that  what  I  wanted  from  the 
Red  Cross  for  my  purpose  was  not  the  organization  nor 
the  equipment  but  the  people — the  rank  and  file  of  the 
people  in  the  Red  Cross  who  had  made  themselves  the 
soul  of  it  and  who  would  make  the  soul  of  anything — 
particularly  the  men  and  women  who  partly  before  and 
partly  after  the  armistice,  had  come  to  cool  a  little — 
had  come  to  feel  the  lack  of  a  compelling  vision  to  set 
before  the  people  of  America,  which  if  duly  recognized 
and  duly  stated  by  the  leaders  of  the  Red  Cross  would 
have  swept  over  all  of  us — would  have  kept  us  all  ac- 
tively engaged  in  it,  could  have  drawn  into  daily  active 
labor  in  the  Red  Cross,  the  day  the  armistice  was  signed, 
ten  men  and  women  for  victory  of  a  great  people  over 
themselves,  where  in  the  mere  stress  of  merely  beating 
Germans,  there  had  been  one  before. 


IV 

THE   CALL   OF  A   WORLD 

THE   difference  between  a  first  class  nation  and  a 
second  class  nation  might  be  illustrated  by  the  his- 
tory of  almost  any  live  man  in  any  live  profession. 

Dentists  at  first  pulled  teeth  and  put  in  new  ones. 
Then  they  began  filling  them.  Now  people  are  paying 
dentists  high  prices  for  keeping  them  so  that  they  have 
no  teeth  to  fill. 

Orthopedic  practice  has  gone  through  the  same  revolu- 
tion. A  bone  doctor  used  to  be  called  in  after  a  leg 
was  broken,  and  set  it.  To-day  we  see  a  doctor  in  a  hos- 
pital take  up  a  small  boy,  hold  him  firmly  in  his  hands, 
and  break  his  legs  so  that  he  will  have  straight  legs  for 
life.  The  next  stage  probably  will  be  to  begin  with 
bow-legged  babies,  take  their  bones  and  bend  them 
straight  when  they  are  soft,  or  educate  their  mothers — 
to  keep  them  from  walking  too  soon. 

The  essential  thing  that  has  happened  to  dentistry  is 
that  they  now  kill  the  germs  that  decay  the  teeth. 

The  first  natural  thing  for  the  Red  Cross  to  do  would 
be  the  day  after  the  armistice  to  go  back  to  war  germs. 

The  Red  Cross  with  its  branches  in  every  town  and 
every  nation  in  the  world  would  announce  that  from 
that  day  on,  through  a  vast  new  division,  it  would  oc- 
cupy itself  with  germs — with  the  germs  of  six  inch  guns, 
with  the  germs  of  submarines.  It  would  deal  with  the 
embryology  of  war. 

227 


228      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

The  germs  of  war  between  nations,  breed  in  wars  be- 
tween classes,  and  the  germs  of  class  war  breed  in  the 
wars  between  persons,  and  the  germs  of  war  between 
men  and  men  breed  in  each  man's  not  keeping  peace 
with  himself. 

It  is  when  I  am  having  a  hard  time  getting  on  with 
Stanley  Lee  that  I  am  likely  to  have  a  row  with  Ivy  Lee. 
It  is  a  colossal  understatement  to  say  that  charity  be- 
gins at  home.  Everything  does.  If  a  man  understands 
himself  he  can  understand  anybody.  If  he  gets  on  with 
himself  the  world  will  fall  into  his  hands. 

The  great  short  cut  to  stopping  war  between  peoples 
is  to  stop  war  between  capital  and  labor.  This  is  a 
feat  of  personality  and  of  engineering  in  human  nature. 
It  is  a  home- job,  and  when  we  have  done  it  at  home  we 
can  sow  all  nations  with  it.  If  I  wanted  to  stop  a  war 
between  Ivy  Lee  and  me  I  would  have  to  pick  out  a 
series  of  things  to  do  to  Ivy  Lee  and  to  say  to  him  which 
he  would  like  to  have  me  do  and  say  to  him.  Then  I 
would  pick  out  in  myself  things  that  Ivy  Lee  does  not 
like  to  have  me  do  to  him  and  say  to  him,  and  which 
possibly  when  I  study  on  them  I  will  not  want  to  do. 

Up  to  Ivy  to  do  the  same  to  me. 

This  is  a  science.  It  is  not  merely  a  vision  or  a  reli- 
gion. Removing  the  cause  of  fighting  may  be  a  less  exact 
science  of  mutual  study  and  self-study,  but  it  is  ap- 
proximately exact.  It  is  also  a  fascinating  and  con- 
tagious science.  We  master  the  embryology  of  war 
between  persons — the  embryology  of  war  between 
classes,  and  then  between  nations.  The  principles  which 
we  demonstrate  and  set  up  working  samples  of  in  one 
of  these  problems  will  prove  to  be  the  principles  of  the 
others. 


THE  CALL  OF  A  WORLD  229 

If  people  do  not  believe  in  germs  enough  and  are  more 
afraid  of  fire,  I  would  change  the  figure. 

We  are  proposing  to  follow  up  at  once,  the  Red  Cross, 
which  was  run  as  a  fire  engine  to  put  or  help  put  out 
fires  between  nations,  with  the  Air  Line  League  which  is 
to  be  run  as  a  machine  for  not  letting  fires  between  na- 
tions get  started. 

Edward  A.  Filene  of  Boston  in  trying  to  have  a  suc- 
cessful department  store  found  the  women  behind  his 
counters  got  very  tired  standing  in  the  street  cars  night 
and  morning  on  the  way  home  and  took  up  with  a  will 
getting  new  rapid  transit  for  Boston.  He  found  he  could 
not  get  rapid  transit  for  Boston  without  helping  to  get  a 
new  government  and  that  he  could  not  get  a  new  govern- 
ment without  helping  to  get  a  new  Boston. 

He  then  found  he  could  not  help  get  a  new  Boston 
without  getting  new  trade  and  industrial  conditions  in 
Boston  and  that  he  could  not  help  get  new  ideals  work- 
ing in  trade  and  industry  in  Boston  without  helping  in 
the  ideals  of  a  nation.  He  then  found  he  could  not  get 
a  new  nation  without  trying  to  help  make  several  new 
nations.  Then  came  the  International  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce. 

Something  like  this  seems  to  happen  to  nearly  every 
man  I  know  who  really  accomplishes  anything. 

Or  any  nation. 

Frederick  Van  Eeden  of  Holland  began  life  as  a 
painter  with  marked  success  but  being  a  lively  and  in- 
terested man  he  could  not  help  wondering  why  people 
were  not  getting  out  of  paintings  in  Holland — his  own 
and  other  people's,  what  they  ought  to  and  what  they 
used  to,  and  became  a  critic.  He  found  people  did  not 
respond  to  his  ideas  of  how  they  ought  to  enjoy  things 


230      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

and  then  won  distinction  as  a  poet,  but  why  did  not 
more  people  get  more  out  of  the  best  poetry?  He  then 
wrote  one  or  two  novels  of  high  quality  which  Holland 
was  proud  of  and  which  were  read  in  several  languages, 
but  why  did  not  the  people  read  novels  of  a  high  char- 
acter as  much  as  they  did  the  poorer  ones? 

He  decided  that  it  was  because  people  were  physically 
underorganized  and  not  whole  in  body  and  mind — like 
the  Greeks,  and  became  a  physician. 

He  thought  he  was  being  thorough  when  he  became  a 
physician  but  soon  found  that  he  was  not  getting  down 
to  the  causes  after  all,  of  people's  not  having  whole 
bodies  and  fine  senses  capable  of  appreciating  the  finer 
things  and  c.  oon  came  to  the  conclusion  that  for  the  most 
part  what  was  the  matter  with  their  bodies  was  due  to 
what  was  wrong  in  their  habits  of  thought  and  in  their 
minds,  and  became  an  alienist  and  founded  the  first 
psycho-therapeutic  hospital  in  Holland. 

He  then  found  that  in  what  was  the  matter  with 
people 's  minds,  he  was  still  superficial  and  that  people 's 
minds  were  wrong  because  of  the  social  and  industrial 
conditions,  ideals  and  institutions  under  which  they  were 
conceived  and  born,  and  had  to  live. 

He  then  devoted  himself  to  being  a  publicist  and  so- 
ciologist, had  charge  of  bread  for  the  poor  during  the 
great  bread  riots  in  Amsterdam  and  is  now  engaged  in 
grappling  nationally  and  internationally  with  industrial 
and  civil  war  as  the  cause  of  all  failures  of  men  and  na- 
tions to  express  and  fulfill  their  real  selves  in  the  world. 

Any  nation  that  wants  to  be  a  great  nation  and  to  ful- 
fill and  express  itself  and  be  a  first  class  nation  will 
sooner  or  later  find  that  it  has  to  go  on  from  one  in- 
dividual personal  interest  to  another  until  it  finds  it  is 


THE  CALL  OF  A  WORLD  231 

doing    practically    what    Frederick    Van    Eeden    did. 

The  only  way  to  look  out  for,  or  to  express  oneself  is 
to  try  to  help  everybody  else  to. 

The  Red  Cross  at  the  end  of  the  war  in  making  elab- 
orate and  international  arrangements  to  run  a  pleasant 
and  complimentary  ambulance  to  the  relief  of  disease 
in  society  that  society  was  deliberately  creating  every 
day,  instead  of  taking  advantage  at  the  end  of  the  war 
of  the  trust  all  classes  had  in  it,  and  taking  advantage 
of  the  attention  of  forty  nations,  of  society's  best  and 
noblest  need,  to  keep  society  from  causing  the  disease, 
chose  to  be  superficial,  faced  away  from  its  vision,  fell 
behind  the  people,  absconded  from  the  leadership  of  the 
world. 

The  aches  and  pains  of  society  with  which  since  the 
war,  the  Red  Cross  so  politely  and  elegantly  deals,  which 
with  white  kid  gloves  and  without  hurting  our  feelings 
it  spends  our  money  to  relieve  are  all  caused  by  the 
things  we  daily  do  to  each  other  to  make  the  money. 

The  vision  of  the  common  people  in  America  recog- 
nizes this  and  recognized  it  instantly  at  the  end  of  the 
war.  The  hearts  of  the  men  and  women  of  America  to- 
day, are  at  once  too  bitter,  too  deep  and  too  hopeful  not 
to  instantly  lose  interest  in  a  Red  Cross  which  asks  them 
to  help  run  it  as  a  beautiful  superficial  ambulance  to 
the  evils  people  are  doing  to  one  another  instead  of  as 
a  machine  to  help  them  not  to  do  them. 


MISSOURI 

THE  best  service  America  can  render  other  nations 
to-day  is  be  herself — fulfill  and  make  the  most  of 
herself. 

Senator  Reed  of  Missouri  would  probably  agree  with 
me  in  this. 

Where  I  differ  with  Senator  Reed  is  in  what  America 
should  propose  to  do  to  make  the  most  of  herself. 

Senator  Reed  of  Missouri  judging  from  reports  of  his 
speeches  in  the  Senate  wants  America  in  the  present  dis- 
traction of  nations  to  stop  thinking  of  the  others,  wizen 
up  and  be  safe. 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  America  were  to  cut  herself 
off  from  the  rest  of  the  world  in  its  hour  of  need  and 
just  shrivel  up  into  thinking  of  herself  she  would  fail  to 
fulfill  herself  and  be  like  herself.  She  would  just  be 
like  Senator  Reed  of  Missouri. 

Nothing  could  be  less  safe  for  America  just  now  than 
to  be  like  Senator  Reed  of  Missouri. 

Senator  Reed  puts  forward  a  patriotism  which  is  sin- 
cere but  reckless.  In  the  Senate  of  fifty  states,  Reed 
says  "I'm  from  Missouri."  In  the  congress  of  nations, 
Reed  says  "America  iiber  Alles."  "The  world  for 
America."  "America  for  Missouri."  "Missouri  for 
Me!" 

For  America  just  at  the  present  moment  in  the  world 
it  has  got  to  belong  to,  to  turn  away  and  stop  being  in- 

232 


MISSOURI  233 

terested  in  the  whole  world  and  in  everybody  in  it  and 
in  what  everybody  is  going  to  do  and  be  kept  from 
doing — is  like  a  man's  shutting  himself  up  in  his  own 
stateroom  and  being  interested  in  his  own  port  hole  in 
a  ship  that  is  going  down.  It  seems  more  sensible  for 
America — even  from  the  point  of  view  of  looking  out 
for  herself — not  to  go  down  with  Senator  Reed  and 
moon  around  in  his  stateroom  with  him,  but  to  be  deeply 
interested  in  the  whole  ship,  and  in  the  engines,  the 
wheelhouse  and  the  pumps. 

Patriotism  that  just  shuts  a  nation  up  into  a  private 
stateroom  nation  by  itself  or  that  makes  a  nation  just 
live  with  its  own  life  preserver  on,  to  preserve  its  own 
life  preserver,  can  end  either  for  Senator  Reed  or  for 
America  in  but  one  way. 

It's  going  to  end  in  a  plunge  of  the  ship. 

It  is  going  to  end  in  Senator  Reed's  running  out,  and 
running  up  to  the  deck  the  last  minute. 

I  do  not  know  how  other  people  feel  about  it,  but  it 
seems  to  me  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  intelligent 
self-interest,  the  spectacle  of  Senator  Reed  of  Missouri, 
tying  Missouri  like  a  millstone  around  his  neck  and 
then  casting  himself,  Missouri  and  all,  into  the  sea, 
while  it  may  have  a  certain  tragic  grandeur  in  it,  can 
hardly  be  said  to  be  a  practical  or  business-like  ex- 
ample for  his  country. 

I  would  like  to  show  if  I  can  that  Senator  Reed  is 
wrong,  and  to  present  the  alternative  patriotism  we  pro- 
pose to  stand  for  in  the  Air  Line  League. 

The  Germans  have  said  (and  have  spent  forty  bil- 
lion dollars  in  saying  it)  that  democracy  cannot  be 
made  to  work.  They  sneered  at  us  during  the  war  and 
said  to  England,  America  and  the  rest  of  us  that  we 


234      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

could  not  make  democracy  work  in  running  an  army 
and  keep  up  with  Germans  in  war,  and  they  are  sneer- 
ing at  us  now  that  we  cannot  make  democracy  work  in 
industry  and  keep  up  with  Germans  in  peace. 

Forty  nations  half -believe  that  the  Germans  are  right 
about  industrial  democracy,  about  democracy's  not 
being  a  real,  sincere,  every  day  thing,  a  thing  every  man 
can  have  the  good  of  all  day  every  day  of  his  life,  and 
a  good  many  people  in  America — extreme  reactionaries 
and  extreme  radicals,  agree  or  act  as  if  they  agreed  with 
the  Germans. 

If  the  Germans  are  right  about  this,  it  is  very  absent- 
minded  for  America  to  pay  very  much  attention  just  now 
to  her  industries.  If  America  is  living  in  a  world  as 
insane  as  Germany  says  it  is,  the  one  thing  ahead  for 
us  to  do,  and  do  for  the  next  thirty  years,  with  all  the 
other  forty  nations,  is  to  breed  men-children,  and  train 
men-children  fast  enough  and  grimly  enough  to  be  ready 
to  murder  the  young  men  of  other  nations  before  they 
murder  ours. 

Everything  must  be  geared  and  geared  at  once  to  the 
Germans'  being  right. 

Or  it  must  be  geared  and  geared  at  once  to  their  being 
wrong,  to  challenging  the  Germans — to  telling  them  that 
they  are  as  fooled  about  what  industrial  democracy  can 
do  in  peace,  as  they  were  with  what  it  could  do  in  war. 

The  one  thing  we  can  do  in  America  now  to  get  the 
Germans  or  anybody  else  to  believe  us  about  industrial 
democracy  is  to  make  American  democracy  in  industry 
whip  German  militarism  in  industry  out  of  sight  in  our 
own  labor  unions  and  in  our  own  factories.  Then  we 
will  whip  German  militarism  in  industry  out  of  the 
markets  of  the  world. 


MISSOURI  235 

If  the  quickest  way  for  the  American  people  to  get  a 
decent  world — a  world  we  want  to  do  business  in,  is  to 
whip  German  militarism  in  industry,  and  if  the  quick- 
est way  to  whip  German  militarism  abroad  is  to  whip 
it  at  home,  why  is  it  we  are  not  everywhere  opening  up 
our  factories,  calling  in  our  money  and  our  men  and 
settling  down  to  work? 

What  is  it  that  is  scaring  capital  and  labor  away  and 
holding  back  money  and  men? 

The  fear  of  the  United  States  Senate. 

The  fear  and  coma  of  war  in  all  nations,  among  the 
men  who  furnish  money  and  men  who  furnish  labor, 
while  awaiting  for  the  United  States  Senate  and  other 
governments  not  to  be  afraid  of  war. 

The  first  item  on  the  business  schedule  of  every  nation 
to-day  is  to  stop  this  fear. 

The  first  way  to  stop  this  fear  we  have  of  other  na- 
tions abroad  is  to  stop  our  fear  of  one  another  at  home, 
is  to  watch  people  we  know  all  about  us,  at  desks,  at 
benches  and  machines  on  every  side,  who  all  day  every 
day  are  making  peace  work  between  classes,  better  than 
war  does.  Making  democracy  work  in  business  is  the 
first  condition,  for  America  and  the  world  of  having 
any  business. 

It  is  not  merely  in  behalf  of  other  nations,  but  in  be- 
half of  ourselves,  that  I  am  advocating  the  direct  action 
of  the  people  welded  together  into  one  mass  organiza- 
tion, to  secure  by  the  direct  daily  action  of  the  three 
classes  together  the  rights  of  industrial  democracy  for 
each  of  them.  The  Air  Line  League  is  proposed  not 
as  a  bearing-on  organization  but  as  a  standing-by  or  big- 
brother  organization  guarding  the  free  initiative,  the 
voluntary  self-control  of  labor  and  capital  and  the 


236      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

public,  the  team  work  and  mutual  self-expression  and 
self-fulfillment  of  all  classes. 

The  whole  issue  is  all  folded  up  in  this  one  issue  of 
industrial  democracy — in  proving  to  people  by  advertis- 
ing it  to  them  and  by  dramatizing  it  to  them  that  in- 
dustrial democracy  works. 

It  is  because  the  Germans  believe  that  men  who  have 
been  forced  against  their  wills  to  do  team  work,  are 
more  efficient,  can  produce  more  and  compete  more  suc- 
cessfully than  enthusiastic  and  voluntary  m^n  doing 
team  work  because  they  understand  and  want  to,  that 
Germany  is  a  second-class  nation  and  that  the  German 
people  have  had  to  put  up  for  forty  years  with  being 
second-class  human  beings.  They  have  a  ruling  ma- 
jority of  second-class  human  beings  in  Germany  because 
they  have  the  most  complete  and  most  exhaustive  ar- 
rangements any  nation  has  ever  dreamed  of,  for  mak- 
ing second-class  human  beings  out  of  practically  any- 
body— arrangements  for  howling  down  to  people,  for 
telling  people  what  they  have  got  to  do  as  a  substitute 
for  the  slower,  deeper,  more  productive  course  of  mak- 
ing them  want  to  do  it. 

Taking  the  line  of  least  resistance — the  mechanical 
course  in  dealing  with  human  nature,  makes  America's 
being  a  second-class  nation  a  matter  of  course. 

What  we  have  always  been  hoping  for  in  America  is 
that  in  due  time  we  are  going  to  be  a  first-class  na- 
tion— a  nation  crowded  with  men  and  women  who, 
wherever  they  have  come  from,  or  whether  or  not  they 
were  first  class  when  they  came,  have  been  made  first 
class  by  the  way  that  all  day  every  day  in  their  daily 
work  they  have  been  treated  by  the  rest  of  us  when 
they  come  to  us,  and  by  the  way  they  treat  one  another. 


A  VICTORY  LOAN  ADVERTISEMENT 
May  10,  1919 

THE  BOY   WHO  STUCK   HIS  FOOT  IN 

A  SMALL  boy  the  other  day  walked  up  to  one  of 
those  splendid  marble  pillars  before  the  The  Vic- 
tory Arch  and  stuck  his  foot  in. 

I  went  over  and  stooped  down  and  felt  of  the  crust. 
It  was  about  an  inch  and  a  half  thick. 

Then  I  stood  in  the  middle  of  The  Avenue,  all  New 
York  boiling  and  swirling  round  me  and  looked  up  at 
The  Arch  of  Victory — massive,  majestic  white  and  heav- 
enly and  soaring  against  the  sky,  and  my  heart  ached! 

Something  made  me  feel  suddenly  close  to  the  small 
boy. 

"What  he  wanted  to  know  with  his  foot,  was  what  this 
splendid  Victory  Arch  he  had  watched  his  big  brave 
brothers  march  under  and  flags  wave  under,  and  bands 
play  through  four  hours,  was  made  of;  how  much  it 
amounted  to — how  deep  the  glory  had  struck  in. 

I  thought  what  a  colossal  tragical  honest  monument 
it  was  of  our  victory  over  the  Germans  .  .  .  forty  na- 
tions swinging  tlieir  hats  and  hurrahing  and  eighty- 
seven  million  unconquered  sullen  Germans  before  our 
eyes  in  broad  daylight  making  a  national  existence  from 
now  on,  out  of  not  paying  their  bills !  .  .  .  eighty-seven 
million  Germans  we  have  all  got  to  devote  ourselves 
nationally  to  sitting  on  the  necks  of  six  hundred  years. 

237 


238      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

I  am  not  sorry  the  small  boy  stuck  his  foot  in.  Mil- 
lions of  Americans  though  in  a  politer  way  are  doing 
it  all  this  week.  "We  want  to  poke  through  to  the  truth. 
We  want  something  more  than  a  theater  property  Vic- 
tory Arch,  our  soldier  boys  marching  under  it  as  if  it 
were  a  real  one! 

We  want  four  and  a  half  billion  dollars  this  week  to 
make  it  honest — to  take  down  our  lath  and  plaster  Arch 
and  put  it  up  in  marble  instead. 

We  make  this  week  a  wager  to  the  world, — a  four  and 
a  half  billion  dollar  dare  or  cry  to  God  that  we  are  not 
a  superficial  people,  that  the  American  people  will  not 
be  put  off  with  a  candy  victory,  all  sugar  and  hurrahs 
and  tears  and  empty  watery  words — that  we  will  chase 
Peace  up,  that  we  will  work  Victory  down  into  the 
structure  of  all  nations — into  the  eternal  underpinning 
of  a  world. 

In  the  meantime  this  glorious  alluring,  sneering  beck- 
oning Victory  Arch,  all  whipped  cream  and  stone  froth, 
a  nation's  gigantic  tragic  angel  cake,  with  its  candy 
guns  and  its  frosting  on  it  and  before  our  eyes  the  grim 
unconquered  souls  of  eighty-seven  million  Germans 
marching  through  I 

We  will  let  it  stand  haunting  us,  beckoning  us  along 
to  a  victory  no  small  boy,  no  Bolshevik  nation  can  stick 
its  foot  in ! 


When  I  corrected  the  proof  of  this  advertisement — it 
was  the  last  advertisement  of  the  last  week  of  the  last 
Liberty  Loan  in  New  York — it  was  not  as  true  of  our 
victory  and  of  the  world's  victory  over  the  Germans  as 
it  is  now.  And  The  Arch  of  Victory  in  Madison  Square 
has  melted  away  into  roar. 


A  VICTORY  LOAN  ADVERTISEMENT      239 

But  the  truth  I  have  spoken  has  not  melted  away. 

What  The  Air  Line  League  is  for  in  its  national  and 
international  organization  of  the  will  of  a  free  people 
to  make  democracy  work,  is  to  answer  the  boy  who  stuck 
his  foot  in. 


BOOK  V 

THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  A  NATION'S  BEING  BOBN 
AGAIN 


RECONSTRUCTION 

I  STARTED  this  book  taking  the  Crowd  for  my  hero 
— that  faint  bodiless  phantasmagoric  presence,  that 
helpless  fog  or  mist  of  humanity  called  the  People. 

I  have  proceeded  upon  two  premises. 

A  spirit  not  connected  with  a  body  is  without  a  tech- 
nique, without  the  mechanical  means  of  self-expression 
or  self-fulfillment.  It  is  a  ghost  trying  to  have  a  family. 

A  body  not  connected  with  its  spirit  is  without  a 
technique  for  seeing  what  to  do.  It  is  without  the 
spiritual  means  of  self-expression  and  self-fulfillment. 
It  is  like  a  sewing-machine  trying  to  have  a  family. 

Some  of  my  readers  will  remember  a  diagram  in 
"Crowds"  in  which  I  divided  people  off  roughly  into 

Inventors                  Artists  Hewers 

or  or 

See-ers                  Engineers  Those  who  work 

Men   who   invent  Men  who   invent  out     and     finish 

things  to  do.           ways  and  means  what    the   see-ers 

and  make  it  pos-  and     engineers 

sible  to  do  them,  have  begun. 

I  have  based  what  I  have  to  say  in  the  next  few  chap- 
ters on  this  anatomy  or  rather  this  biology  of  a  nation 's 
human  nature. 

In  the  next  few  pages  I  am  dealing  not  with  the 
reconstruction  but  with  the  reconception  of  a  nation. 


244      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Reconstruction  is  a  dead  difficult  laborious  thing  t« 
try  to  put  off  on  a  boundless  superabundant  ganglion  of 
a  hundred  million  lives  like  the  American  people. 

In  the  crisis  that  confronts  America  to-day  not  only 
the  most  easy,  but  the  most  natural  and  irresistible  way 
for  this  nation  to  be  a  great  nation  is  to  fall  in  love. 

I  am  enlarging  in  these  next  few  pages  upon  IIOAY 
crowds  and  experts — that  is:  crowds  and  their  men  of 
vision  and  engineers  can  come  to  an  understanding  and 
get  together. 

I  wish  to  state  certain  particular  things  I  think  are 
going  to  be  done  by  the  people — that  the  people  may  be 
conscious  of  themselves,  may  be  drawn  into  the  vision 
of  the  world  and  of  themselves,  that  in  this  their  great 
hour  in  history,  a  great  people  may  be  born  again. 


n 

NATIONAL  BIOLOGY 

A  MAN  in  being  born  the  first  time  is  the  invention 
of  others.  Being  born  again  is  the  finding  of  one- 
self, oneself, — the  spiritual  invention  of  one's  own  life. 

Being  born  again  is  far  more  intelligent  than  being 
born  the  first  time. 

All  one  has  to  do  to  see  this,  is  to  look  about  and  see 
the  people  who  have  done  it. 

When  one  is  being  born  the  first  time  one  does  not 
even  know  it.  One  is  not  especially  intelligent  the  first 
time  and  could  not  really  help  it.  And  nobody  else 
could  help  it. 

"When  one  is  being  born  again  it  takes  all  one  can 
know  and  all  one  can  know  and  do,  and  all  everybody 
around  one  knows,  and  all  everybody  around  can  do,  to 
help  one  do  it.  In  1776  when  America  was  being  born 
first,  America  did  not  have  the  slightest  idea  of  what 
was  happening.  It  has  taken  one  hundred  and  forty- 
four  birthdays  to  guess. 

A  nation  is  born  the  first  time  with  its  eyes  shut. 

But  in  this  terrible  1920  when  America  is  being  born 
again,  she  can  only  manage  to  be  born  again  by  know- 
ing all  about  herself,  by  disrobing  herself  to  be  born 
again,  by  a  supreme  colossal  act  of  self-devotion,  self- 
discovery,  self-consciousness  and  consciousness  of  the 

245 


246      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

world,  naked  before  God,  reading  the  hearts  of  forty 
nations,  a  thousand  years  and  the  unborn,  and  knowing 
herself, — slipping  off  her  old  self  and  putting  on  her 
new  self. 


Ill 


THE   AIR  LINE  LEAGUE 

THE  first  thing  a  spirit  in  this  world  usually  does  to 
find  a  body  is  to  select  a  father  and  mother.  The 
American  people  if  it  is  to  be  embodied  and  have  the 
satisfaction  and  power  of  making  itself  felt  and  express- 
ing itself,  can  only  do  so  by  following  the  law  of  life. 

A  hundred  million  people  can  only  get  connected  with 
a  body,  acquire  a  presence — find  itself  as  a  whole,  the 
way  each  one  of  the  hundred  million  people  did  alone. 

In  a  nation's  being  born  again  three  types  of  mind 
are  necessarily  involved. 

The  minds  in  America  that  create  or  project,  the  in- 
ventors. 

The  minds  that  bring  up. 

The  minds  that  conceive  and  bring  to  the  birth. 

These  three  classes  of  spiritual  forces  are  concerned  in 
America  in  making  the  people  stop  being  a  ghost,  in 
making  their  American  people  as  an  idea,  physically  fit. 

The  first  thing  to  be  arranged  for  America  to  make  the 
people  quit  being  a  ghost  in  The  "White  House,  is  to 
form  into  three  bodies  or  organizations,  these  three, 
groups  of  men — make  these  three  groups  of  men  class- 
conscious,  self-conscious,  conscious  of  their  own  power 
and  purpose  in  America — and  have  everybody  in  Amer- 
ica conscious  of  them.  I  propose  three  organizations  to 
stand  for  these  three  life-forces,  three  organizations 

247 


248      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  \YHITE  HOUSE 

which  will  act — each  of  which  will  act  with  the  other 
two  and  will  follow  out  for  a  nation,  as  individuals  do 
for  individuals,  the  law  of  life — of  producing  and  re- 
producing the  national  life. 

The  minds  that  are  creative  will  discover  and  project 
a  national  idea  for  the  people — the  inventors,  will  act 
as  one  group. 

The  minds  that  conceive  and  bring  the  idea  to  the 
birth,  that  bring  the  idea  to  pass,  called  engineers,  will 
act  as  another,  and  the  minds  that  teach,  bring  up,  draw 
out  and  apply  the  idea  and  relate  the  idea  to  life — will 
act  as  another. 

I  propose  a  club  of  fifty  thousand  creative  men  be 
selected  and  act  together — that  a  nation  may  be  con- 
ceived. 

I  propose  that  fifty  thousand  engineers  or  how-men, 
men  who  think  out  ways  and  means,  be  selected  and  act 
together,  that  the  nation  that  is  conceived  may  be  born. 

These  two  Clubs  will  have  their  national  headquarters 
together  in  a  skyscraper  hotel  of  their  own  in  New 
York  and  will  act  together — in  bringing  an  idea  for  the 
people  into  the  world. 

The  third  Club — twenty  or  thirty  million  people,  on 
the  scale  of  the  Red  Cross — in  ten  thousand  cities,  will 
apply  and  educate  the  idea,  bring  it  up  and  put  it 
through. 


What  one's  soul  is  for,  I  suppose,  is  that  one  can  use 
it  when  one  likes,  to  contemplate  and  to  enjoy  an  Idea. 

"What  one  has  a  body  for  with  reference  to  an  idea 
is  to  take  it  up,  try  it  out  and  put  it  through. 

The  Air  Line  League  proposes  to  coordinate  these 
three  functions  and  operate  as  a  three  in  one  club. 


THE  AIR  LINE  LEAGUE  249 

The  idea  would  be  to  call  the  first  of  the  clubs,  the 
club  of  inventors,  the  Look-Up  Club.  The  second,  a 
club  of  how-men  and  engineers,  the  Try-Out  Club,  and 
the  third — the  operating  club  of  the  vast  body  of  the 
people  taking  direct  action  and  putting  the  thing 
through  locally  and  nationally  would  be  called  The  Put- 
Through  Clan. 

The  Air  Line  League  through  these  three  clubs  will 
undertake  to  help  the  people  to  stop  being  an  abstrac- 
tion, to  swear  off  from  being  a  Ghost  in  their  own  house. 
The  great  working  majority  of  the  American  people — 
of  the  men  and  the  women  who  made  the  Red  Cross  so 
effective  during  the  war,  which  came  to  the  rescue  of 
the  people  of  the  nation  with  the  people  of  other  na- 
tions, will  come  to  the  rescue  now,  during  the  war  the 
people  are  having  and  that  the  classes  of  people  are 
having  with  one  another. 


IV 

THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP 

§  1.  For  Instance. 

SUCH  a  crisis  as  this  nation  has  now,  Springfield, 
Massachusetts,  had  once. 

Springfield  a  few  years  ago,  all  in  a  few  weeks,  threw 
up  the  chance  of  being  Detroit  because  two  or  three 
automobile  men  who  belonged  in  Springfield  and  wanted 
to  make  Springfield  as  prosperous  as  Detroit,  were  prac- 
tically told  to  go  out  to  Detroit  and  find  the  men  who 
would  have  the  imagination  to  lend  them  the  money — 
to  make  Springfield  into  a  Detroit. 

Naturally  when  they  found  bankers  with  imagination 
in  Detroit  they  stayed  there. 

What  happened  to  Springfield  is  what  is  going  to  hap- 
pen to  America  if  we  do  not  make  immediate  national 
arrangements  for  getting  men  who  have  imagination  in 
business  in  this  country,  men  who  can  invent  man- 
power, to  know  each  other  and  act  together. 

The  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  Frank  Cousins  of 
Detroit  recognized  Henry  Ford  with,  a  few  years  ago, 
he  gave  back  the  other  day  to  Henry  Ford  for  twenty- 
nine  million  dollars. 

People  say  as  if  that  was  all  there  was  to  it,  that  the 
fate  of  this  nation  to-day  turns  on  our  national  man- 
power. 

250 


THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP     251 

But  what  does  our  national  man-power  turn  on  ? 

It  turns  on  people's  knowing  and  knowing  in  the  nick 
of  time,  a  man  when  they  see  one. 

Man-power  in  a  democracy  like  ours  turns  on  having 
inventors,  bankers  and  crowds  act  together. 

Sometimes  banks  hold  things  back  by  being  afraid  to 
cooperate  with  inventors  or  men  of  practical  imagina- 
tion. 

This  is  called  conservatism. 

Sometimes  it  is  the  crowds  and  laborers  who  hold 
things  back  by  being  afraid  to  cooperate  with  leaders  or 
men  of  imagination. 

But  the  fate  of  all  classes  turns  upon  our  having  men 
of  creative  imagination  believed  in  by  men  who  furnish 
money,  and  believed  in  by  men  who  furnish  labor. 

The  idea  of  the  Look-Up  Club  is  that  men  of  creative 
imagination  shall  be  got  together,  shall  be  made  class- 
conscious,  shall  feel  and  use  their  power  themselves  and 
put  it  where  other  people  can  use  it. 

How  much  time  and  how  many  years  of  producing- 
power  would  it  have  saved  America  if  Alexander  Gra- 
ham Bell  had  known  or  could  have  had  ready  to  appeal 
to,  America's  first  hundred  thousand  picked  men  of  im- 
agination, when  he  was  trudging  around  ringing  door- 
bells in  Boston,  trying  to  supply  people  with  imagination 
enough  to  see  money  in  telephones  ? 

If  William  G.  McAdoo,  when  he  had  invented  with  his 
tunnels,  a  really  great  conception  of  the  greater  New 
York,  and  was  fighting  to  get  people  in  New  York  to 
believe  in  it,  and  act  on  it,  had  had  an  organization  of 
one  hundred  thousand  picked  men  of  imagination  in  the 
nation  at  large  to  appeal  to — one  hundred  thousand  men 
picked  out  by  one  another  to  put  a  premium  on  con- 


252      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

structive  imagination  when  they  saw  some,  instead  of  a 
penalty  on  it,  how  much  time  would  it  have  saved  New 
York  and  saved  McAdoo?  How  much  time  would  a 
national  Club  like  this  save  this  nation  to-day  and  from 
now  on  in  its  race  with  the  Germans  ? 

Why  should  our  men  of  practical  creative  imagina- 
tion to-day  waste  as  much  time  running  around  and  ask- 
ing permission  of  people  who  had  none,  as  McAdoo  had 
to? 


If  a  hundred  thousand  silver '  dollars — just  ordinary 
silver  dollars — were  put  together  in  a  row  in  New  York 
on  a  sidewalk,  everybody  going  by  would  have  imagina- 
tion at  once  about  the  one  hundred  thousand  silver  dol- 
lars and  what  could  be  done  with  them. 

But  put  one  hundred  thousand  picked  men — or  men 
of  exceptional  power  together  in  a  row  in  New  York — 
and  why  is  it  everybody  is  apt  to  feel  at  first  a  little 
vague  and  troubled  about  them,  stands  off  around  the 
corner  and  wonders  what  can  be  done  with  one  hundred 
thousand  immortal  human  beings? 

I  wish  people  would  have  as  much  imagination  about 
what  could  be  done  with  one  hundred  thousand  fellow 
human  beings  picked  out  and  got  together  from  the 
men  of  this  nation,  as  they  would  have  about  one  hun- 
dred thousand  silver  dollars. 

This  is  one  of  the  first  things  the  Look-Up  Club  is 
for,  to  get  people  to  be  inspired  by  a  hundred  thousand 
men  put  together,  in  the  same  way  that  they  are  by  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  put  together. 


I  went  out  last  night  and  walked  up  the  Great  White 
Way  and  looked  at  the  little  flock  of  hotels  that  are 


THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP  253 

standing  to-day  on  the  site  of  my  faith  in  these  hun- 
dred thousand  men — the  site  of  the  new  hotel — the  little 
sleeping  shelf  in  the  roar  of  New  York  for  the  hundred 
thousand  men  to  have  on  Broadway. 

I  stood  and  looked  at  the  five  or  six  hotels  now  stand- 
ing there  waiting  to  be  torn  down  for  us,  and told 

nie  that  the  seventeen  parcels  of  land  in  the  block  that 
he  had  labored  on  forty-seven  people  to  get  them  to 
make  up  their  minds  to  put  their  lots  together,  were 
worth  only  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars,  either  to 
them  or  to  anybody  else,  while  they  were  making  up 
their  minds  to  let  their  lots  be  put  together.  And  now 
that  he  had  got  their  minds  made  up  for  them  and  had 
got  all  these  foolish,  distracted  seventeen  parcels  of  land 
together  into  one,  the  land  instead  of  being  worth  one 

million  and  a  half  dollars,  was  appraised  by  the 

other  day  as  worth  four  and  a  half  million  dollars. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  hundred  thousand  men  of 
practical  imagination  scattered  in  five  thousand  cities, 
twiddling  on  the  fate  of  a  nation  alone. 

The  same  thing  is  going  to  happen  to  the  value  of  the 
men  that  has  happened  to  the  separate  lumps  of  sand 
and  clay  they  called  real  estate  in  New  York. 

What  can  I  manage  to  accomplish  alone  in  trying 
to  get  to  Chicago  to-morrow  morning? 

All  I  could  do  alone  would  be  to  walk. 

As  it  is,  I  stand  in  line  a  minute  at  a  window  in  the 
Grand  Central  Station,  make  a  little  arrangement  with 
several  hundred  thousand  men  and  with  a  slip  of  paper 
I  move  to  Chicago  while  I  go  to  sleep. 

This  power  for  each  man  of  a  hundred  thousand  men 
is  what  I  am  offering  in  this  little  book  to  the  nine 
hundred  and  ninety  thousand  others. 


254      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

What  will  we  do,  what  ideas  will  we  carry  out? 

Get  one  hundred  thousand  picked  men  together  and 
what  can  they  not  do,  what  ideas  can  they  not  carry  out  ? 

"What  is  hard,  what  is  priceless,  is  getting  the  men  and 
getting  the  men  together.  Everybody  who  has  ever  done 
anything  knows  this. 

What  we  are  doing  is  not  to  get  values  together,  but 
the  men  who  keep  creating  the  values. 

The  men  who  have  created  already  the  values  of  five 
thousand  cities,  shall  now  create  values  for  a  nation. 

I  am  not  writing  to  people — to  the  hundred  thousand 
men  who  are  going  to  be  nominated  to  the  Look-Up  Club 
— to  ask  them  whether  they  think  this  idea  of  mine — of 
having  the  first  hundred  thousand  men  of  vision  of  this 
country  in  a  Club,  is  going  through  or  not. 

I  am  writing  them  and  asking  them  if — if  it  is  going 
through — they  want  to  belong  to  it. 

Very  few  men  can  speak  with  authority — even  if  they 
would,  as  to  what  the  other  ninety-nine  thousand  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  men  will  possibly  do  or  not 
do  with  my  idea  in  this  book.  But  any  man  can  speak 
with  authority  and  speak  immediately  when  he  gets  to 
the  end  of  it,  as  to  how  he  feels  himself,  whether  he 
wants  or  likes  the  idea,  and  wants  to  count  one  to  bring 
the  idea  to  pass. 

I  speak  up  for  myself  in  this  book.  Anybody  can  see 
it.  If  every  man  will  confine  himself  in  the  same  way, 
and  will  stake  off  himself  and  attend  to  himself  at  the 
end  of  this  book  and  say  what  he  wants — we  will  all 
get  what  we  want. 

The  proposition  looks  rather  big,  mathematically,  but 
looked  at  humanly,  it  is  a  simple  straight  human-nature 


THE  LOOK-UP  CLUB  LOOKS  UP     255 

question.  All  I  really  ask  of  each  man  who  is  nomi- 
nated is, 

"If  the  first  hundred  thousand  men  who  have  imagi- 
nation in  business  are  being  selected  and  brought  to- 
gether out  of  all  the  other  business  men  in  America, 
do  you  want  to  be  one  of  them  ?  "Who  are  the  ten,  twenty 
or  fifty  men  of  practical  vision  in  business — especially 
young  men,  you  think  ought  not  to  be  left  out?" 

It  is  all  an  illusion  about  numbers  and  sizes  of  things. 

The  way  to  be  national  is  to  be  personal,  for  each  man 
to  take  sides  with  the  best  in  himself. 

Suddenly  across  a  nation  we  look  in  a  hundred  thou- 
sand faces. 

§  2.  Why  the  Look-Up  Club  Looks  Up. 

The  Constitution  does  not  provide  for  an  Imagination 
Department  for  the  United  States  Government. 

It  has  judicial,  executive  and  legislative  departments, 
but  a  department  made  up  of  men  of  vision  to  create, 
conceive  and  reconceive,  go  deeper  and  see  further  than 
law  and  restraints  can  go,  does  not  exist  in  our  Gov- 
ernment. 

We  have  a  Judicial  Department  to  decide  on  whether 
what  is  born  has  a  right  to  live — a  Legislative  Depart- 
ment to  pass  rules  under  on  how  it  shall  be  obliged  to 
live — and  an  Executive  Department  to  make  it  mind — 
but  the  department  to  create  and  to  conceive  for  the 
people  is  lacking. 

Government  at  best  is  practically  a  dear  uncle  or  dear 
maiden-aunt  institution. 

Government  as  a  physical  expression  is  without  func- 
tions of  reproduction. 


256      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

Government — contrary  to  the  theory  of  the  Germans — 
from  the  point  of  view  of  sheer  power  in  projecting  and 
determining  the  nature  and  well-being  of  men — the  fate 
of  men  and  the  world — is  superficial,  is  a  staid,  stand- 
ardized, unoriginal  affair — devoted  to  ready-made  ideas 
like  the  Red  Cross  during  the  war. 

This  is  what  is  the  matter  with  a  Government's  posing 
in  this  or  any  other  nation  as  a  live  body  for  the  people. 

The  spontaneous  uprising  of  business  men  during  the 
war — the  spectacle  of  the  dollar  a  year  men  overwhelm- 
ing and  taking  over  the  government,  the  breaking  in  of 
the  National  Council  of  Defense — the  spontaneous  com- 
bustion of  millions  of  free  individuals  into  one  colossal 
unit  like  the  Red  Cross — all  the  other  outbreaks  of  the 
creative  vital  power  of  the  superior  people  of  the  nation, 
all  point  to  the  fact  that  when  new  brain  tracks  are 
called  for,  the  natural  irresistible  way  is  to  find  individ- 
ual persons  who  have  them,  who  make  them  catching  to 
other  individual  persons,  and  who  then  give  body  to 
them  across  the  nation. 

Its  whole  nature  and  action  of  a  Government  tend  to 
make  Government  and  most  of  the  people  in  it  mechan- 
ical. 

In  the  nature  of  things  and  especially  in  the  nature  of 
human  nature,  this  nation — if  its  new  ideas  and  its  ne-vy 
brain  tracks  are  to  come  to  anything  at  all,  they  must 
have  a  spontaneous  willful  and  comparatively  free  origin 
and  organization  of  their  own. 

Hence  the  Look-Up  Club  cooperating  with  the  Try-Out 
Club  to  act  as  an  informal  Imagination  Department  for 
the  United  States. 


THE  TRY-OUT   CLUB   TRIES   OUT 

§  1.  I  +  Yw,  =  We. 

IF  Darius  the  Great  had  put  the  eunuchs  of  his  court 
in  charge  as  Special  Commissioners  for  controlling 
the  social  evil  in  Babylon,  they  would  have  made  very 
sad  work  of  what  they  had  to  do  because  they  would  not 
have  understood  what  it  was  all  about.  They  would 
not  have  had  the  insight  necessary  to  measure  their  job, 
to  lay  out  a  great  engineering  project  in  human  nature, 
determine  the  difficulties  and  the  working  principles  and 
go  ahead. 

"What  makes  a  man  a  man  is  the  way  he  takes  all  the 
knowledge,  the  penetrating  lively  enriching  knowledge 
his  selfishness  gives — his  vision  of  what  he  wants  for 
himself,  and  all  the  broadening  enriching  knowledge  his 
unselfishness  gives — his  imagination  about  what  he  wants 
for  others,  and  pours  the  two  visions  together. 

The  law  of  business  is  the  law  of  biology — action — 
reaction — interaction.  I-(-You=:We. 

It  is  getting  to  be  reckless  for  the  people  in  other  na- 
tions to  sit  around  and  gossip  about  how  bad  it  is  for 
the  Germans  to  be  so  selfish.  It  is  reckless  for  capital  to 
gossip  about  how  selfish  labor  is — and  for  labor  to  putter 
away  trying  to  make  capital  pure  and  noble  like  a  labor 
union. 

257 


258      THE  GHOST  IX  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

There  are  far  worse  things  than  selfishness  in  people. 

Being  fooled  about  oneself  is  worse  because  it  is  more 
difficult  to  get  at,  meaner,  more  cowardly  and  far  more 
dangerous  for  others. 


This  chapter  has  been  written  so  far  on  a  pad  in  my 
pocket  while  inhabiting  or  rather  being  packed  in  as 
one  of  the  bacilli  with  twenty  other  men,  in  the  long  nar- 
row throat  or  gullet  of  a  dining-car.  "When  I  was  swal- 
lowed finally  and  was  duly  seated,  the  man  who  was 
coupled  off  with  me — a  perfect  stranger  who  did  not 
know  he  was  helping  me  write  this  chapter  in  my  book, 
reached  out  and  started  to  hand  himself  the  salt  and  then 
suddenly  saw  I  might  want  it  too  and  passed  ij;  to  me. 

He  summed  up  in  three  seconds  the  whole  situation  of 
what  democracy  is,  the  whole  question  between  the  Ger- 
mans and  the  other  peoples  of  the  earth. 

With  one  gesture  across  a  little  white  table  he  settled 
the  fate  of  a  world. 

His  selfishness,  his  own  personal  accumulated  experi- 
ence with  an  egg,  made  him  see  that  he  wanted  salt  in  it. 

His  unselfishness  made  him  see  that  I  must  be  sitting 
there  wanting  salt  in  an  egg  as  much  as  he  did. 

So  he  took  what  his  selfishness  made  him  see  on  the 
one  hand  and  wliat  his  unselfishness  made  him  see  on 
the  other,  put  them  together  and  we  had  the  salt  to- 
gether. 

Incidentally  he  finished  this  chapter  and  dramatized 
(just  as  I  was  wishing  somebody  would  before  I  handed 
it  in)  the  idea  I  am  trying  to  express  in  it.  This  in  a 
small  way  is  a  perfect  working  model  of  what  I  call 
civilization.  Unselfishness  in  business  is  not  a  civiliza- 


THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT          259 

tion  at  all.  It  is  a  premature,  tired,  sickly,  fuddle- 
headed  heaven. 

Imagination  about  other  people  based  upon  imagina- 
tion about  what  one  wants  oneself,  is  the  manly,  un- 
fooled,  clean-cut  energy  that  rules  the  world. 

The  appetites  in  people  which  make  them  selfish  sup- 
ply them  with  such  a  rich  big  equipment  for  knowing 
what  other  people  want,  that  if  they  really  use  this 
equipment  in  a  big  business  way  for  getting  it  for  them, 
no  one  can  compete  with  them. 

A  righteous  man  if  he  has  any  juice  in  him  at  all  and 
is  not  a  mere  giver,  a  squush  of  altruism,  a  mere  negative 
self-eliminating,  self-give-up,  self-go-without  person — is 
a  selfish  person  and  an  unselfish  person  mixed.  "What 
he  calls  his  character  is  the  proportion  in  which  he 
chooses  to  mix  himself. 

Half  the  trouble  with  this  poor  foolish  morally  daw- 
dling old  world  to-day  is  that  it  is  still  hoping  fondly 
it  is  going  to  be  pulled  straight  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  by  morally  sterilized,  spiritually  pasteurized  per- 
sons, by  men  who  are  trying  to  set  the  world  right  by 
abolishing  the  passions  instead  of  by  understanding 
them,  instead  of  taking  the  selfishness  and  unselfishness 
we  all  have,  controlling  them  the  way  other  antagonisms 
in  nature  are  controlled  and  making  them  work  together. 

People  in  other  nations  are  as  selfish  in  their  way  as 
the  Germans  are  in  theirs — capital  is  as  selfish  as  labor, 
or  labor  as  capital.  The  fundamental  virtue  in  modern 
business  men,  the  spiritual  virility  that  makes  for  power 
is  their  gift  of  using  their  selfishness  to  some  purpose, 
in  understanding  people  with  whom  they  deal  and  learn- 
ing how  to  give  them  what  they  want. 


260      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

It  takes  more  brains  to  pursue  a  mutual  interest  with 
a  man  than  to  slump  down  without  noticing  him  into 
being  an  altruist  with  him.  Any  man  can  be  a  selfish 
man  in  a  perfectly  plain  way  and  any  man  can  be  an 
altruist — if  he  does  not  notice  people  enough,  but  it 
takes  all  the  brains  a  man  has  and  all  the  religion  he 
has  to  pursue  with  the  fear  of  God  and  the  love  of  one's 
kind,  a  mutual  interest  with  people  one  would  like  to 
give  something  to  and  leave  alone. 

This  is  what  I  call  the  soul  of  true  business  and  of  live 
salesmanship. 

I  put  it  forward  as  the  moral  or  spiritual  basis  on 
which  the  engineers  in  the  Try-Out  Club,  of  the  Air  Lina 
League,  propose  to  act. 

The  way  for  America  to  meet  the  German  militaristic 
and  competitive  idea  of  business  and  of  the  business 
executive — the  idea  that  brought  on  the  war,  is  for 
America  and  the  rest  of  the  world  to  put  forward  some- 
thing and  put  forward  something  quick,  as  a  substitute 
for  it,  sell  to  themselves,  sell  to  one  another  and  to  the 
Germans  before  it  is  too  late,  a  substitute  for  it. 

The  American  engineers  of  business  or  great  execu- 
tives— the  how-men  and  inventors  of  how  to  bring  things 
to  pass,  must  put  forward  the  pursuit  of  mutual  in- 
terests in  the  largest  sense,  pursuit  of  mutual  interests 
generously  and  finely  conceived,  the  selfishness  and  un- 
selfishness mixed,  as  this  substitute. 

§  2.  The  Engineer  At  Work. 

The  crowning  glory  of  a  nation  is  the  independence 
and  the  spiritedness  of  its  labor. 

I  rejoice  daily  that  the  war  has  made  a  man  expensive, 


THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT          261 

has  made  it  impossible  for  men  to  succeed  in  business 
any  longer  as  employers  who  do  not  love  work,  who  can- 
not make  other  men  love  their  work,  and  who  have  noth- 
ing in  themselves  or  in  their  job  or  the  way  they  make 
the  job  catching — who  cannot  get  men  to  work  for  them 
except  by  offering  them  more  money  than  they  can  earn. 
The  fact  that  no  man  is  so  cheap  he  can  be  had  by 
merely  being  paid  money — the  fact  that  no  man  is 
so  unimportant  but  he  has  to  be  approached  as  a  fellow 
human  being  and  has  to  be  persuaded — and  given  some- 
thing human  and  real,  is  the  first  faint  flush  of  hope  for 
our  modern  world.  It  lets  in  an  inkling  at  last  that  the 
industrial  world  is  going  to  be  a  civilization. 


If  men  were  made  of  india-rubber,  or  reinforced  con- 
crete, or  wood  or  steel,  no  one  could  hope  for  better  or 
more  efficient  men  to  manage  big  business  than  the  typi- 
cal big  business  men  of  the  phase  of  American  industry 
now  coming  to  an  end. 

But  of  course  in  the  crisis  business  is  facing  now, 
which  turns  on  the  putting  forward  of  men  who  under- 
stand and  can  play  masterfully  upon  the  motives,  temp- 
tations and  powers  of  ordinary  human  nature  the  typi- 
cal man  we  know  at  the  Mahogany  Desk,  who  has  a 
machine  imagination,  who  sees  men  as  dots  and  dreams 
between  piles  of  dollars  and  rows  of  machines,  is  a  singu- 
larly helpless  person  and  can  only  hold  his  own  in  his 
own  business  by  giving  way  and  putting  forward  in  place 
of  himself,  men  who  are  masters  in  human  nature,  ex- 
perts and  inventors  in  making  men  want  to  work. 

The  difference  between  the  business  world  that  is 
passing  out  and  the  one  that  is  coming  in,  is  that  the 
masters  of  the  world  who  have  been  proud  before,  to  be 


262      THE  GHOST  IX  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

called  the  captains  of  industry,  are  going  to  think  of 
themselves  and  want  others  to  think  of  them  as  the 
fathers  of  industry.  The  man  who  orders  can  no  longer 
order.  People  will  only  work  and  work  hard  for  the 
man  who  fills  them  with  new  conceptions,  who  stirs  the 
depths  of  their  lives  with  desire  and  hope. 

The  reason  that  reactionary  capital  is  having  trouble 
with  labor,  is  that  it  is  putting  forward  men  who  order 
instead  of  putting  forward  fathers  and  inventors. 

The  reason  that  the  I.  AY.  W.  and  other  labor  organi- 
zations are  having  trouble  with  capital,  is  that  their 
leaders  are  not  inventors.  They  are  tired  conventional 
men  governed  by  automatic  preconceptions,  merely  doing 
over  again  more  loudly  and  meanly  against  society,  the 
things  that  capital  has  already  tried  and  has  had  to  give 
up  because  it  could  not  make  them  work. 

Only  inventors — executives  who  invent  and  fertilize 
opportunity  for  others — men  who  invent  ways  of  making 
men  see  values — men  who  create  values  and  who  present 
people  with  values  they  want  to  work  out,  are  going  to 
get  anything — either  money  or  work,  from  now  on,  out 
of  anybody. 

§  3.  The  Engineer  and  the  Game. 

The  time  has  gone  by  when  a  man  can  say  any  longer 
he  is  not  in  business  for  the  fun  of  it.  He  finds  he  can- 
not long  compete  with  the  men  about  him  who  are,  with 
engineers  and  others  who  are  in  business  for  the  great 
game  of  producing  results,  of  doing  difficult  things,  of 
testing  their  knowledge,  their  skill  and  their  strength. 

Making  men  want  to  work  has  come  to  be  the  secret 


THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT          263 

of  success  in  modern  business  and  the  employer  who 
has  nothing  but  wages  to  offer,  nothing  in  his  own  pas- 
sion for  work  which  he  can  make  catching  to  others, 
can  only  get  second-rate,  half-hearted  men  and  plodders 
about  him.  A  factory  in  which  the  workmen  merely 
work  for  wages,  cannot  hope  to  compete  with  a  factory 
fitted  up  with  picked  men  proud  of  their  work. 

It  is  not  going  to  be  necessary  to  scold  people  into 
not  being  selfish,  or  whine  people  into  loving  their  work. 
A  man  who  is  so  thin-blooded  that  the  one  way  he  can 
get  work  out  of  himself  is  to  make  money — the  man  who 
grows  rich  by  ordering,  by  gobbling,  and  by  hiring 
gobblers  and  plodders,  cannot  function  under  the  new 
conditions.  The  guarantee  that  we  are  going  to  have  a 
civilization  now,  that  business  with  joy  in  it  and  personal 
initiative  and  motive  in  the  work  itself,  is  going  to  take 
possession  of  the  markets  of  the  world  is  based  on  the 
fact  that  labor  has  to  have  its  imagination  touched  in 
order  to  work  efficiently,  and  an  entirely  new  level  and 
new  type  of  man — the  man  who  can  touch  men's  imagi- 
nations, is  being  put  forward  in  business  to  do  it. 

The  Engineer  is  going  to  have  somewhat  the  quieting 
effect  upon  institutions  and  upon  the  spirit  of  unrest 
in  the  people,  when  he  is  known  to  be  in  control  of  the 
great  employers  and  has  made  them  dependent  on  him, 
that  the  matter  of  fact  and  rather  conclusive  taxi  meter 
in  a  cab  has  on  the  man  inside,  who  wants  to  quarrel 
with  his  cabman. 

A  business  world  largely  in  control  of  men  who  have 
the  spirit  and  the  technique  of  engineers  will  make  un- 
rest more  awkward,  will  make  the  red  flag  look  stranger, 
feel  stranger  and  lonelier  every  day. 


264      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

§  4.  The  American  Business  Sport. 

If  any  man  ever  again  in  this  world  finds  like  Me- 
thuselah, the  secret  of  eternal  youth,  the  secret  will  be 
found  to  consist  in  being,  I  suspect,  what  the  best  Amer- 
ican business  man  already  is — what  I  would  call  a  fine 
all-round  religious  sport. 

Sport  has  certain  well-known  disadvantages.  So  has 
religion.  The  man  who  once  grasps  the  secret  of  modern 
life  as  practiced  by  a  really  big  engineering  genius, 
insists  upon  having  his  business  allowed  all  the  ad- 
vantages of  sport  and  religion  both. 

To  have  something  on  which  one  spends  ten  hours  a 
day,  which  has  all  the  advantages  without  the  disadvan- 
tages of  being  a  iport,  and  all  the  advantages  without 
the  disadvantages  of  being  a  religion,  is  a  find. 

The  typical  engineer,  like  any  other  thorough-going 
man  treats  what  he  does  as  a  sport.  That  is,  he  puts  his 
religion  for  the  fun  of  it  into  his  business.  His  business 
becomes  the  continual  lark  of  making  his  religion  work. 
He  dramatizes  in  it  his  belief  in  human  nature  and  in 
God,  his  belief  that  human  nature  is  not  crazy  and  that 
God  has  not  been  outwitted  in  allowing  so  much  of  it 
to  exist. 

It  has  looked  especially  reckless  during  the  last  four 
years  for  God  to  let  human  nature  try  to  keep  on  being 
human  nature  any  longer.  Now  is  the  time  of  all  others, 
and  Germany  is  now  the  country  of  all  others,  to  show 
with  a  whole  world  looking  on  how  essentially  sound 
human  nature  really  is,  and  how  being  human  (espe- 
cially being  human  in  a  thing  which  everybody  cares 
about  and  which  everybody  notices,  like  business)  really 
works. 


THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT          265 

There  has  never  been  such  a  chance  dreamed  of  for 
a  nation  before  in  history,  the  chance  America  has  now  of 
dramatizing  to  Germans,  and  dramatizing  through  the 
Germans  to  everybody,  an  idea  of  business  efficiency  that 
shall  be  in  itself  not  only  in  its  spirit  but  in  its  very 
substance,  peace  come  into  the  world. 

People  shall  not  put  up  with  mere  leagues  and  truces, 
arbitration  boards,  fight-dove-tailings.  They  shall  not 
sit  at  tables  and  twirl  laws  at  people — to  make  them, 
peaceful.  .  .  . 


The  only  men  in  modern  business  who  can  now  hope 
to  get  to  the  top  are  the  men  who  are  in  a  position 
to  hire  men  who  do  not  work  for  wages. 

Making  men  want  to  work  is  the  secret  of  the  engineer 
in  production. 

The  secret  of  modern  industry  is  the  secret  of  tne  man 
who  loves  his  work.  To  the  sporting  man,  the  gentleman, 
the  man  who  loves  the  game,  the  prize  goes  now  in  com- 
petition with  Gobblers  and  Plodders. 

The  Engineer  or  Winner  instead  of  the  Compeller  of 
Men  is  going  to  draw  out  new  kinds  and  new  sizes  of 
laboring  men  in  industry  at  every  point.  The  Engineer 
we  count  on  in  the  Try-Out  Club  is  the  man  who  super- 
imposes upon  the  normal  and  suitable  motive  in  his  busi- 
ness of  being  selfish  enough  to  make  money  to  keep  the 
business  up,  the  motive  of  the  gentleman,  the  profes- 
sional man,  the  artist,  the  engineer,  the  sport — the  mo- 
tive of  doing  a  thing  for  its  own  sake,  and  because  one 
likes  it. 

The  expression  "I  am  not  in  business  for  the  fun  of 
it "  is  going  by. 

What  we  are  going  to  do  with  the  mere  half-alive 


266      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

profit-plodders — the  mere  wage  gobblers,  is  not  to  im- 
prove them  by  making  moral  eyes  at  them,  or  discipline 
them  by  putting  down  lids  of  laws  over  them  or  by  firing 
taxes  at  them.  "We  are  going  to  discipline  men  like 
these  by  driving  them  into  the  back  streets  of  business, 
as  anaemic,  second-rate  and  inefficient  men  in  bringing 
things  to  pass. 

A  man  who  in  a  tremendous  and  absorbing  adventure 
like  real  business  is  so  thin-blooded  or  thick-headed  that 
all  he  can  get  work  out  of  himself  for  is  money,  will  only 
be  able  to  get  the  plodding  kind  of  second-rate  workers 
to  work  for  him,  i.  e.,  he  will  be  able  to  get  only  plodders 
who  merely  work  for  money,  by  paying  higher  wages 
than  other  people  have  to — by.  paying  higher  wages 
than  they  can  earn. 

In  other  words,  civilized  business,  business  with  joy  in 
it  and  personal  initiative  and  human  interest  in  the  work 
itself,  is  going  to  drive  uncivilized  plodding  half-hearted 
business  out  of  the  markets  of  the  world. 

The  men  who  are  expressing  through  the  hearts  of 
the  people  their  best,  more  lasting  and  more  powerful 
selves,  in  business,  who  are  gathering  around  them  other 
people  who  are  doing  it,  the  men  who  try  out  their  best 
selves  in  business — who  invent  ways  as  executives  to 
make  their  best  selves  work  for  them  and  for  others,  are 
having  to-day  before  our  eyes,  the  world  placed  in  their 
hands.  Men  who  represent  vital  forces  like  these,  are  as 
solid,  unconquerable  in  human  life  as  the  force  of  grav- 
ity, the  multiplication  table  they  are.  They  find  them- 
selves dominating  like  radium,  penetrating  like  fresh 
air,  drawing  all  things  to  them  like  the  sky,  the  stars, 
like  spring,  like  the  love  of  women  and  of  children  and 
the  love  of  Christ! 


THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT          267 

The  idea  of  having  imagination  about  a  customer  and 
studying  a  customer  as  a  means  of  winning  his  trade,  his 
personal  enthusiasm  and  confidence,  is  not  considered 
sentimental. 

Having  imagination  about  one's  employees  so  that 
they  will  work  in  the  same  spirit  as  the  other  partners, 
is  no  longer  considered  sentimental  except  by  the  type 
of  employer  now  being  driven  to  the  wall  because  he 
has  no  technique  for  making  anybody  want  to  work  for 
him.  As  things  go  to-day  it  is  the  leader  in  industry 
who  is  trying  to  keep  up  a  fine  comfortable  feeling  of 
being  a  captain  of  industry — the  man  who  feels  he  owns 
everything  and  owns  everybody  in  sight,  who  is  visionary 
and  sentimental,  who  is  the  Don  Quixote  of  business  now. 

The  employer  who  feels  superior  to  individuals,  who 
looks  at  men  as  dots  and  dreams — and  who  expects  to 
deal  with  a  man  subconsciously  and  get  on  with  him 
as  if  he  were  not  there — the  employer  who  is  an  absentee 
in  soul  and  body,  and  who  gives  an  order  to  his  men  and 
then  goes  off  and  leaves  them  like  pumps,  hydraulic 
rams,  that  of  course  cannot  help  slaving  away  for  him 
until  they  are  stopped — the  employer  who  during  the 
first  stupid  stages  of  our  new  machine-industry,  has  been 
allowed  to  be  prominent  for  a  time,  now  stands  exposed 
as  too  wooden  and  incompetent  to  conduct  the  intimately 
personal,  difficult  and  human  institution  a  factory  has 
got  to  be  if  it  succeeds  (in  a  country  with  men  like  ours) 
in  producing  goods. 

From  now  on  the  big  man  in  business  is  the  man  who 
gets  work  out  of  people  that  money  cannot  buy.  The 
man  who  cannot  get  the  work  that  money  cannot  buy  in 
a  few  years  now,  is  not  going  to  stand  the  ghost  of  a 
chance. 


268      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

People  will  not  believe  you  if  you  tell  them  what  the 
world  was  like  when  he  did. 


Mastering  others  so  that  they  have  to  do  what  one 
says  is  superficial,  merely  a  momentarily  successful- 
looking  way  a  man  has  of  being  a  failure.  This  master 
has  been  tried.  He  has  failed.  He  is  the  half -inventor  of 
Bolshevism. 

The  real  master  is  not  the  man  who  masters  men,  but 
who  makes  them  master  themselves.  The  masterful  man 
in  getting  out  of  people  what  he  wants,  is  the  man  who 
makes  the  people  want  him  to  have  what  he  wants — 
makes  them  keep  giving  it  to  him  fresh  out  of  their  hearts 
every  day. 

The  wholesale  national  and  international  criticism  the 
Red  Cross  workers  made  in  the  latter  months  of  the  Red 
Cross  activities,  of  the  touch-the-button  and  hand-down- 
the-order  methods  of  many  of  the  business  men  who 
controlled  the  activities  at  home  and  abroad — of  the 
millions  of  workers  in  the  Red  Cross,  has  been  itself  a 
kind  of  national  education  in  what  certain  types  of 
American  business  men  placed  in  power  fell  inadver- 
tently into,  in  trying  to  treat  millions  of  free  people 
on  the  employer  and  employee  plan. 

But  these  men  and  their  whole  idea  are  going  by.  We 
are  getting  down  to  the  quick,  to  the  personal  and  the 
human,  to  the  sense  all  good  workers  have  of  listening 
and  being  listened  to  and  of  not  being  overridden.  Big 
business  after  this  is  going  to  be  big  in  proportion  as  it 
makes  people  feel — employees  and  customers  both,  that 
they  are  listened  to,  that  they  are  being  dealt  with  as 
individual  human  beings  and  not  as  fractions  of  individ- 


THE  TRY-OUT  CLUB  TRIES  OUT          269 

uals,  or  as  part  of  some  big  vague  bloodless  lump  of 
humanity. 

Studying  one's  customers  so  as  to  make  them  want 
to  trade  with  one  is  here  to  stay. 

To  speak  of  studying  with  the  best  expert  skill  in  the 
country  one's  employees  so  as  to  make  them  want  to 
work,  as  humanity,  is  not  quite  bright.  It  is  not  human- 
ity. It  is  business. . 

Making  people  trade  with  one  instead  of  making  them 
want  to  trade  with  one  is  recognized  as  second-rate  busi- 
ness. So  is  making  people  work  for  one  instead  of 
making  them  want  to  work.  The  business  man  who 
depends  for  his  business,  on  customers,  or  on  workers 
who  want  to  get  away  and  are  going  to  the  first  minute 
they  can,  naturally  goes  under  first. 


VI 


THE  PUT-THROUGH   CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH 

§  1.  What. 

WE  are  a  people  who  think  in  action.  Our  way  of 
making  other  nations  think  and  of  thinking  our- 
selves is  to  do  things. 

The  people  who  swept  into  and  took  over  the  Red 
Cross,  who  dramatized  the  American  people  in  the  war 
abroad — are  the  people  who  are  going  to  make  war  at 
home  impossible. 

The  big  spiritual  or  material  fact  about  the  Red  Cross 
is  that  it  has  been  a  dramatic  organization,  that  for  four 
years  it  has  been  an  organization  for  acting  out  the  feel- 
ings, desires,  wills  and  beliefs  of  a  great  people  toward 
men  who  were  fighting  for  liberty. 

The  Red  Cross  has  been  a  great  emotional  epic  play,  an 
expression  in  action,  of  the  heart  and  brain  of  a  mighty 
nation. 

Emotions  by  great  peoples  have  been  spectacular  be- 
fore, and  they  have  been  sentimental  and  they  have 
been  occupied  with  enjoying  themselves. 

But  in  the  Red  Cross  twenty  million  people  have  been 
as  inspired  as  Saint  Francis  and  as  practical  as  a  Steel 
Trust  in  the  same  breath. 

The  vision  of  the  future  of  the  Put-Through  Clan  that 
lies  ahead  is  that  it  shall  keep  on  dramatizing  these 

270 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     271 

qualities  in  the  American  character  at  home,  selecting 
things  to  do  which  shall  dramatize  our  people  to  one  an- 
other, to  themselves  and  to  the  people  of  other  nations. 


The  way  to  make  democracy  work  is  for  the  people 
to  use  their  brains,  their  spirit  and  their  imagination 
to  do  team-work  with  the  inventors  and  engineers  who 
help  express  their  democracy  for  them. 

The  platform  of  the  Put-Through  Clan  is  the  right 
of  all  to  be  waited  on. 

Skilled  labor  has  a  right  to  be  waited  on  by  skilled 
capital. 

Skilled  capital  has  a  right  to  skilled  labor  in  return. 

The  new  and  stupendous  force  in  modern  life  from 
now  on  is  to  be  the  skilled  consumer — the  organization 
of  the  consumer-group  to  cooperate  with  skilled  capital 
and  skilled  labor,  to  make  it  impossible  as  it  is  now,  for 
unskilled  capital,  capital  which  has  not  the  skill  to  win 
the  public,  or  to  win  its  own  labor,  and  for  unskilled 
labor,  labor  which  cannot  earn  its  money  and  takes  it 
whether  it  earns  it  or  not,  to  compel  the  consumer  by 
force  and  by  holdups  to  buy  goods  they  do  not  want  at 
prices  they  are  not  worth  from  men  with  whom  they  do 
not  want  to  deal.  The  skilled  consumer  will  organize 
his  skill  and  deal  with  the  people  he  wants. 

All  the  people  of  this  country — the  consumers  (the 
real  employers  of  all  employers)  have  to  do,  is  to  whisper 
in  one  national  whisper  through  a  hundred  thousand 
grocery  stores  and  other  stores  what  kind  of  employers 
and  workmen,  what  kind  of  goods  and  factories  they 
like,  and  the  buyers  and  consumers  of  America  instead 
of  taking  what  is  poked  out  at  them  because  they  have 
to,  and  being  the  fools  and  the  slaves  of  capital  and 


272      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

labor,  will  get  with  a  whisper  what  they  request,  and 
we  will  return  and  will  let  employers  and  workmen 
return,  to  the  status  of  human  beings. 

§  2.  How. 

The  test  of  a  man's  truth  is  his  technique. 

What  Mathias  Alexander  believes  about  conscious 
control  and  making  self-discipline  work  is  true  because 
he  does  not  have  to  say  it.  He  dramatizes  it. 

Alexander  is  right  in  his  fundamental  idea  of  giving 
conscious  control  to  people  through  new  brain  tracks 
toward  their  bodies  because  they  get  up  and  walk  away 
from  him  when  they  have  been  with  him,  with  their 
new  brain  tracks  on.  New  habits — new  psycho-physical 
habits,  like  Culebra  cuts  are  put  right  through  them. 

The  man  who  conceives  or  invents  may  be  wrong,  the 
man  who  experiments  or  tries  out,  may  need  to  be 
watched,  but  the  man  who  puts  through  is  inviolable. 

The  program,  the  spirit  and  the  function  of  the  Put- 
Through  Clan  in  a  town,  is  to  embody  truth  so  baldly 
and  with  such  a  shameless  plainness  that  no  matter  how 
hard  they  try,  people  cannot  tug  away  from  it. 


There  are  three  courses  we  might  take  in  the  Put- 
Through  Clan  in  dealing  with  our  town.  (1)  We  can 
stand  for  disciplining  capital  and  labor  into  shape  by 
passing  laws  and  heaping  up  penalties.  (2)  We  can 
let  them  see  how  much  better  they  can  make  things  by 
sicking  them  on  to  each  other  and  having  them  discipline 
each  other.  (3)  We  can  make  fun  of  both  of  them  until 
they  make  fun  of  themselves  and  each  class  begins  dis- 
ciplining itself.  Then  general  self-discipline  will  set 
in.  We  propose  to  indulge — each  group  of  us  in  the 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH      273 

Put-Through  Clan— the  labor  group  in  the  town,  the 
employer  group  and  the  public  group,  in  self-disciplining 
ourselves,  until  the  thing  is  made  catching  out  of  sheer 
shame  and  decency  in  others. 

§  3.  Psycho-Analysis. 

The  scientific  basis  for  psycho-analysis  for  a  town, 
or  for  a  labor  union,  or  for  a  Republican  or  Democratic 
Party,  is  found  in  the  facts  that  have  been  stated  by 
Matliias  Alexander  in  his  book  and  demonstrated  by  his 
work. 

Professor  John  Dewey  in  his  introduction  to  Mr. 
Alexander's  book  speaks  of  what  Mr.  Alexander  stands 
for,  as  Completed  Psycho-analysis. 

As  Alexander's  technique  for  pulling  one  particular 
man,  soul  and  body,  together,  is  precisely  the  technique 
I  have  in  mind  for  pulling  a  nation  together,  I  want  to 
dwell  on  it  a  moment  longer  before  applying  it  to  the 
Put-Through  Clan. 

The  first  thing  a  man  is  always  fooled  about  is  his 
own  body  and  in  everything  else  he  is  fooled  about,  he 
just  branches  out  from  that. 

The  Put-Through  Clan  proceeds  upon  the  idea  that 
this  is  as  true  of  his  political  or  social  or  industrial  body 
to  which  he  belongs  as  it  is  of  his  first  one. 

Reform  must  be  self -reform  first. 

If  it  is  true  that  the  majority  of  ideas  and  decisions 
most  people  think  they  make  with  their  minds  are  really 
made  for  them  and  handed  up  to  them  by  their  bodies — 
if  it  is  true  that  what  people  quite  commonly  use  their 
minds  for  is  .to  keep  up  appearances,  to  give  rational- 
looking  excuses  and  reasons. for  their  wanting  what  their 


274      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

stomachs  and  livers  and  nerves  make  them  want,  the 
way  to  persuade  people  nowadays  is  to  do  what  Christ 
did — get  their  minds  out  from  under  the  domination  of 
their  bodies. 

If  it  is  true  that  when  a  man  goes  to  his  dentist  with 
a  toothache,  he  finds  he  does  not  know  which  side  of 
his  mouth  it  is  on,  it  is  likely  to  be  still  more  true  of 
all  the  rest  of  his  ideas  about  himself — his  ideas  about 
his  ideas. 

If  everything  about  us,  about  most  of  us  is  more  or 
less  like  this,  as  Alexander  says — wires  or  nerves  all 
twisted,  sensory  impressions  upside  down,  half  of  what 
is  inside  our  bodies  mislaid  half  the  time,  the  way  to 
change  people's  minds  is  to  change  them  toward  the 
bodies  they  are  with  and  that  they  are  nearest  to,  first. 
Then  we  can  branch  out  and  educate  others — even  edu- 
cate ourselves. 

Millions  of  grown  people,  in  religion,  business  and 
politics  to-day  in  America  can  be  seen  thinking  auto- 
matically of  the  world  about  them  in  the  terms  of  them- 
selves, in  the  terms  of  their  own  souls  sadly  mixed  up 
with  their  own  bodies.  We  all  know  such  people.  The 
world  is  just  an  extension,  a  kind  of  annex  or  wing, 
built  out  from  themselves  full  of  reflections  from  their 
own  livers,  and  fitted  up  throughout  with  air  castles, 
dungeons,  twilights,  sunrises,  after-glows,  from  their  own 
precious  interior  decorations  and  bowels  and  mercies. 

The  basic  fact  about  human  nature  the  Put-Through 
Clan  acts  on  is  the  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  We 
are  always  having  moments  of  seeing  it.  We  all  see 
how  true  it  is  in  babies  we  have  personally  known.  We 
recognize  it  without  a  qualm  in  a  baby,  that  his  emo- 
tions and  reflections  about  life,  about  Time  and  Eternity, 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     275 

and  about  things  in  general  are  just  reflections  of  a 
milk  bottle  he  has  just  had,  or  of  a  milk  bottle  he  has 
not  just  had  and  wants  to  know  why. 

I  have  often  tried  to  translate  a  baby's  cry  in  his 
crib,  into  English.  As  near  as  I  can  come  to  it,  it  is 

"I  don't  think  my  mother  knows  WHO  I  AM!" 

"What  a  baby  is  really  doing  is  disciplining  other  peo- 
ple. 

Not  so  very  different  after  all  from  Senator  Lodge 
pivoting  as  he  has  for  six  months  a  whole  world  on  him- 
self and  on  his  having  his  own  little  way  with  it,  dis- 
ciplining the  rest  of  the  Senate,  forty  nations  and  a 
President,  and  everybody  in  sight — except  himself. 

If  a  patient  nation  could  put  him  in  a  crib,  everybody 
would  understand.  Many  people  apparently  are  de- 
ceived by  his  beard,  or  by  his  degree  at  Harvard,  or  other 
clothes.  But  it  is  the  same  thing.  What  is  really  hap- 
pening to  him — to  Senator  Lodge  is  really  a  kind  of 
spiritual  neuritis.  He  is  cramped,  or  as  the  vulgar  more 
perspicuously  and  therefore  more  fittingly  and  elegantly 
put  it,  his  mind  is  stuck  on  himself.  He  is  imbedded 
in  his  own  mereness  and  now  as  anybody  can  see  there 
is  nothing  that  can  be  done  by  anybody  with  anything, 
not  with  a  whole  world  for  a  crowbar,  to  pry  Lodge 
off  himself. 

Most  of  us  know  other  people  like  this.  Most  of  us 
have  moments  and  subjects  on  which  as  we  have  re- 
membered afterwards  we  have  needed  to  be  pried  off. 
The  same  is  true,  of  course,  of  a  political  body  like  the 
Republican  or  Democratic  Party,  or  of  a  labor  union. 

The  best  that  most  of  us — whole  towns  of  us — can  do 
is  to  get  up  as  we  propose  for  a  whole  town  to  do  in 
the  Put-Through  Clan  on  the  same  platform,  stand  there 


276       THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

cheerfully  all  together  on  the  great  general  platform  and 
admit  in  chorus  sweetly,  that  we  are  all  probably  this 
blessed  moment  and  every  day  being  especially  fooled 
more  or  less  by  ourselves  about  ourselves,  about  the 
things  nearest  to  us — especially  our  own  personal  bodies 
and  political  and  industrial  souls  and  bodies.  The  only 
difference  between  people  who  are  put  into  insane 
asylums  and  those  of  us  who  are  still  allowed  from 
day  to  day  a  little  longer  to  stay  out,  is  that  we  can 
manage,  if  we  try,  some  of  us,  to  be  more  limber  about 
calling  ourselves  fools  in  time.  For  all  practical  pur- 
poses in  this  world,  it  may  be  said  that  the  people  who 
are  wise  and  deep  about  keeping  themselves  reminded 
that  they  may  be  crazy  any  minute,  are  sane. 

What  happens  to  people — to  most  people  when  they 
are  grown  up  is  that  they  stop  being  simple  and  honest 
like  a  baby.  But  they  all  have  practically  the  same 
essential  thought  when  they  are  being  disagreeable.  They 
are  trying  to  make  the  world  around  them  toe  the  line 
to  their  own  interior  decorations.  What  they  think, 
what  they  feel,  what  they  do  in  the  little  back  parlors 
of  their  own  minds  must  be  daubed  on  the  ceiling  of  the 
world. 

The  joy  of  toleration,  of  new  ideas,  of  rows  and  tiers  of 
their  non-selves,  and  of  their  yet-selves  reaching  away 
around  them  that  they  can  still  know  and  share  and 
can  still  take  over  and  have  the  use  of  in  addition  to  the 
mere  self  they  already  have,  they  hold  off  from. 

This  is  where  the  baby  has  the  advantage  of  them. 

§  4.  Psycho-Analysis  for  a  Town. 

When  a  man  thinks  of  himself  and  wants  other  people 
to  think  of  him  as  an  institution— -as  a  kind  of  church — 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     277 

of  course  it  makes  him  very  unhappy  to  believe  he  is 
wrong,  but  the  minute  he  thinks  of  himself  as  a  means 
to  an  end,  thinks  of  his  personality  as  a  tool  placed  in 
his  hand  for  getting  what  he  wants  or  what  a  world 
wants — the  minute  a  man  thinks  of  himself  as  a  kind  of 
spirit-auger,  or  chisel  of  the  soul,  or  as  a  can-opener  to 
truth,  which  if  it  is  a  little  changed  one  way  or  the 
other,  or  held  differently,  will  suddenly  work — changing 
himself  toward  himself,  and  believing  what  he  would 
rather  not,  becomes  like  any  other  invention  or  dis- 
covery, a  creative  pleasure. 

In  saying  that  the  main  thing  the  Put-Through  Clan 
is  for  in  a  town,  is  to  act  as  town-headquarters  for  the 
town's  seeing  through  itself,  as  a  means  of  making  the 
town  the  best,  the  happiest  town  in  the  state — as  a  means 
of  making  it  a  town  that  deserves  anything  it  wants, 
I  am  merely  saying  that  the  act  of  self-invention — the 
act  of  recreation  once  entered  into  as  a  habit  is  so  re- 
freshing and  so  extraordinary  in  itself,  and  so  practical 
in  its  results,  that  when  people  once  see  how  it  really 
works — when  towns  and  parties  and  industrial  groups 
get  once  started  in  self-discipline,  in  self -confession,  in 
psycho-analysis  and  in  taking  advantage  of  opposite 
ideas — there  is  going  to  be  an  epidemic  in  this  country, 
a  flu  of  truth. 

A  whole  city  or  a  whole  town  indulging  in  psycho- 
analysis finds  it  less  embarrassing  and  not  more  em- 
barrassing than  one  man  does. 

When  it  becomes  the  thing  for  a  city  or  for  a  capital  or 
labor  group  to  see  through  itself  and  then  collect  on 
the  benefit  of  it,  the  main  thought  cities  and  labor  unions 
and  employee  managers  will  have  about  it  will  be  a 
wonder  they  had  not  thought  of  it  and  done  it  before. 


278      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

And  it  will  be  economical,  too,  if  people  take  the  see- 
ing through  them  that  has  to  be  done  by  some  one,  and 
do  it  themselves. 

Three  per  cent  of  the  conveniences — the  public  X-ray 
machines  for  keeping  people  from  being  fooled  about 
themselves  will  be  enough. 

The  minute  we  begin  turning  the  X-ray  outfit  around 
and  begin  trying  it  modestly  on  ourselves,  a  small  cheap 
outfit  will  do. 

It  is  a  mere  phonograph-record  to  say  that  nobody 
likes  self-discipline.  "What  people  do  not  like,  is  trying 
it,  or  getting  started. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  possible  for  a  town 
like  Northampton — twenty-five  thousand  people,  to  have 
— if  it  once  gets  started,  almost  an  orgy  of  seeing  what 
is  the  matter  with  it.  It  is  easier  to  be  humble  in  a 
crowd  that  is  being  humble,  and  a  whole  town  disciplin- 
ing itself  instead  of  being  more  difficult  to  imagine, 
would  be  easier,  once  start  the  novelty  of  one  man's 
doing  it. 

Why  should  people  think  that  a  man  who  is  capable  of 
disciplining  himself  is  doing  it  because  he  thinks  he 
ought  to,  or  why  should  they  be  sorry  for  him  ? 

No  one  really  thinks  of  being  sorry  for  Marconi  or 
Edison  or  Wilbur  Wright,  or  Bell,  or  any  big  inventor 
in  business  or  even  for  a  detective  like  Sherlock  Holmes, 
the  whole  joy  and  efficiency  of  whose  life  is  the  way 
he  steals  a  march  on  himself. 

The  very  essence  and  power  of  being  an  inventor  or  a 
detective  or  a  discoverer,  is  the  way  it  makes  a  man 
jump  out  around  himself,  the  way  he  keeps  on  the  qui 
vive  not  to  believe  what  he  likes,  goes  out  and  looks  back 
into  the  windows  he  has  looked  out  of  all  his  life. 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     279 

People  must  not  take  the  liberty  of  being  sympathetic 
with  a  man  who  does  this  and  of  thinking  he  is  being 
noble  and  doing  right. 

It  has  never  seemed  to  me  that  people  who  look  noble 
and  feel  noble  when  they  are  doing  right,  can  ever  really 
do  it.  I  am  not  putting  forward  in  the  present  tragic 
crisis  of  my  nation,  the  idea  of  self-criticism,  of  self- 
confession,  and  of  self-discipline,  with  any  weak  little 
wistful  idea  that  beautiful  and  noble  people  will  blos- 
som up  in  business  all  over  the  country  and  practice 
them.  I  am  offering  self-discipline  as  a  substitute  for 
disciplining  other  people  in  business,  as  a  source  of 
originality,  power  and  ideas,  and  as  a  means  of  getting 
and  deserving  to  get  everything  one  wants.  I  am  offer- 
ing self-discipline  because  it  works.  People  who  get 
so  low  in  their  minds  and  who  so  little  see  how  self- 
discipline  works  that  they  actually  have  the  face  to  feel 
noble  and  beautiful  about  it  when  they  are  having  some, 
cannot  make  it  work.  They  must  be  leaving  most  of 
theirs  out.  .  .  . 

The  psychology  of  self-discipline  is  the  psychology 
of  the  inventor. 

The  inventor  is  the  man  who  lives  in  the  daily  habit 
of  criticising  his  own  mind,  and  disciplining  himself. 
The  source  of  his  creative  and  original  power  is  that 
more  than  other  men  he  keeps  facing  necessities  in  him- 
self, keeps  casting  off  old  selves,  old  preconceptions  and 
breaking  through  to  new  ones. 

The  spiritual  and  intellectual  source  of  the  grip  of 
the  inventor  upon  modern  life,  is  that  he  is  a  scientist  in 
managing  his  own  human  nature  and  his  own  mind,  that 
he  had  a  relentless  rejoicing  habit  of  disciplining  him- 
self. 


280      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

In  every  renaissance,  revival  or  self-renewal  the  world 
has  had,  people  have  had  the  time  of  their  lives.  The 
great  days  of  history  have  been  the  eras  of  great  candid 
truth-facing,  self-discipline.  Self-discipline  and  self- 
discovery  go  together. 

There  is  a  greater  return  on  the  investment  in  being 
born  again,  in  getting  what  one  wants,  than  in  anything 
else  in  the  world. 

If  one  sees  through  himself,  he  can  see  through  any- 
body. It  explains  and  clears  up  one's  enemies  and 
clears  one 's  own  life  for  action. 

§  5.  To-morrqw. 

I  am  not  writing  a  beautiful  wistful  work  on  how  I 
wish  human  nature  would  work  or  hope  it  is  going  to 
work,  in  America. 

I  am  recording  a  grim,  matter-of-fact,  irresistible, 
implacable  law  in  the  biology  of  progress. 

I  am  not  nagging,  teasing  or  apologizing.  I  am  not 
saying  what  I  say  as  religion  or  as  the  Lord  said  unto 
Moses,  or  even  "  as  it  seems  to  me. ' ' 

I  am  not  dealing  in  what  I  want  to  have  happen. 

I  am  dealing  in  truth  as  a  force  and  not  as  a  property. 

I  am  foretelling  what  has  got  to  happen.  People  who 
do  not  believe  it  will  have  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  it. 

The  conscious  control  of  capital,  the  conscious  control 
of  labor,  the  conscious  control  of  the  public  group — 
the  arrival  and  the  victory  of  the  men  who  get  their 
,  way  by  self-control  and  who  are  invited  by  all  to  have 
control  of  others  because  they  have  control  of  themselves, 
is  a  law  of  nature. 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     281 

I  am  not  preaching  or  teasing. 

I  am  not  asking  people's  permission  in  this  book  for 
certain  events. 

This  book  is  not  an  attempt  to  answer  the  question, 
' '  What  is  day  after  to-morrow 's  news  ? ' ' 

It  is  put  forth  as  a  prospectus  of  what  has  got  to 
happen. 

The  truth  is  taking  hold  of  us  and  is  seizing  us  all. 

It  is  for  us  to  say. 

This  book  is  a  scenario  of  a  play  for  a  hundred  mil- 
lion people  to  put  on  the  stage,  and  for  five  hundred 
million  people  to  act. 

§  6.  Who. 

People  will  be  unfair  to  themselves  and  unfair  to  me 
and  will  cheat  a  nation  if  any  attempt  should  ever  be 
made  to  take  this  book  as  a  program — a  program  for 
anybody — and  not  a  spirit. 

The  spirit  is  the  program,  and  the  people  who  natur- 
ally gather  around  the  spirit  and  who  secrete  it  will 
have  to  be  the  ones  to  embody  and  give  it  in  the  Put- 
Through  Clan,  its  local  and  its  national  expression. 

Picked  persons,  picked  out  by  all  for  their  known 
temperament  and  gift  for  team-work — that  is  for  their 
put-through  spirit  or  spirit  of  thoroughness  in  getting 
the  victory  over  themselves  and  combining  themselves 
with  others,  will  need  to  be  the  dominating  people. 

The  essence  of  the  Clan  is  that  it  is  to  be  vivified  and 
penetrated  throughout  with  personality,  and  with  re- 
spect for  personality. 

This  means  automatically  that  the  Put-Through  Clan 


282      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

is  not  going  to  be  dominated  by  people  who  will  make 
it  a  moral-advice,  do-you-good,  hand-you-down-welfare 
institution. 

The  essential  point  in  its  program  is  self -discipline 
and  any  discipline  there  may  be  for  others  will  wait 
until  it  is  asked  for  and  will  be  a  by-product  of  the  dis- 
cipline we  are  giving  ourselves. 

In  the  operation  of  the  Clan  there  are  certain  per- 
sons and  types  of  persons  to  whom  the  Clan  is  always 
going  to  be  distinctly  partial.  It  is  never  going  to  treat 
people  alike.  People  are  not — for  the  time  being — 
alike  and  are  going  to  be  treated  as  they  are. 

Democracy  is  impossible  as  long  as  people  are  not 
treated  with  discrimination — as  long  as  people  cannot 
feel  and  do  not  like  to  feel  that  what  they  are,  makes 
a  difference  in  what  they  get. 

It  is  obvious  that  to  begin  with  that  the  Put-Through 
Clan,  composed  as  it  is  to  be  of  the  leading  people  in  all 
groups — the  people  whose  time  has  a  premium  placed 
on  it  in  their  own  private  business,  will  have  a  regular 
practice  of  giving  the  most  attention  and  giving  the  most 
power,  approval  and  backing  to  those  persons  with  whom 
the  least  time  brings  the  greatest  return. 

This  means  automatically  extreme  reactionaries  and 
extreme  revolutionists  in  industry,  in  getting  what  they 
want  through  the  Put-Through  Clan,  will  have  to  stand 
further  down  the  queue  than  others. 

I  am  only  speaking  for  myself  of  course,  as  one  per- 
son, as  representative — possibly  more  possibly  less  of 
others  in  the  Clan.  Any  scintilla  or  fleck  of  truth  I  can 
pick  off  from  a  revolutionary,  I  take  but  I  will  not  take 
him.  The  same  is  true  of  a  standpatter  or  reactionary. 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     283 

I  want  to  know  all  he  knows.  If  I  take  his  truth  I  can 
use  it,  if  I  take  him  I  will  find  him  cumbersome.  Life  is 
too  short  to  spend  ten  hours  on  him  when  ten  minutes 
would  do  as  much  with  some  one  who  could  listen  or 
converse  or  with  whom  one  could  exchange  thoughts  and 
actions  instead  of  papal  bulls,  orders  and  explosions. 

People  who  do  not  listen — extreme  reactionaries  and 
extreme  revolutionists,  really  ought,  in  getting  the  at- 
tention and  the  backing  they  want  in  the  Put-Through 
Clan,  to  have  what  comes  last  and  what  is  left  over  from 
the  day's  work. 

It  is  only  fair  that  people  should  get  attention  in  pro- 
portion as  a  little  attention  goes  a  great  way. 

If  people  do  not  listen  it  takes  too  much  time  to  deal 
with  them.  Besides  which,  of  course,  giving  what  they 
want  to  people  who  do  not  listen — to  people  who  in 
the  very  face  of  it,  cannot  be  trusted  to  notice  or  con- 
sider others — people  who  are  always  getting  up  and  go- 
ing out,  who  move  in  an  idle  thoughtless  rut  of  ulti- 
matums, is  dangerous. 

People  who  are  in  the  mood  and  the  habit  of  ultima- 
tums will  naturally  be  picked  out  by  the  Put-Through 
Clan  as  the  last  people  they  will  hurry  with. 

Extreme  reactionaries  and  extreme  revolutionaries  ap- 
parently will  have  to  be  carried  and  supported  by  so- 
ciety, kept  on  as  it  were  on  the  spiritual  town  farm  or 
under  surveillance,  or  in  the  workhouse  or  slave  pen 
of  thinking  they  prefer,  until  they  can  come  out  and 
listen  and  treat  the  rest  of  us  as  fellow  human  beings. 


On  the  same  principle  of  time  economy  and  of  being 
fair  to  all,  the  Put-Through  Clan  will  find  itself  coming 


284      THE  GHOST  IN  ,THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

to  its  decisions  and  giving  its  backing  to  people — to 
capital  groups  and  labor  groups  in  proportion  as  they 
are  spirited. 

The  people  who  give  the  most  return  on  the  invest- 
ment— the  people  who  give  the  most  quick  thorough 
and  spirited  response — in  the  general  interests  of  a 
world  that  is  waiting  to  be  decent  must  be  the  ones 
who  shall  be  waited  on  first. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  see  why  it  is  so  generally 
supposed  that  people  who  have  so  little  spiritual  power 
that  they  cannot  even  summon  up  enough  spirit  not  to 
be  ugly,  should  be  spoken  of  as  spirited. 

I  would  define  spirited  labor  as  labor  which  uses  its 
imagination,  labor  which  thinks  and  tries  to  understand 
how  to  get  what  it  wants  instead  of  merely  indulging 
in  wild  destructive  self-expression  and  worship  of  its 
own  emotion  about  what  it  does  not  want. 

Spirited  labor  is  inventive  and  constructive  toward 
those  with  whom  it  disagrees  and  wants  to  <;ome  to 
terms. 

Revolutionaries  and  reactionaries  are  tired  and  auto- 
matic, tumtytumming  people — who  do  not  want  to  think. 

I  am  not  saying  that  spiritually  tired  people  are  to 
blame  for  being  tired.  I  am  pointing  out  a  fact  to  be 
acted  on. 

Tired  people  always  want  the  same  thing.  They  want 
a  thing  to  stay  as  it  is — or  they  want  it  to  stay  just  as 
it  is — upside  down.  The  same  inefficiency,  fear  and 
weakness,  meanness — merely  another  set  of  people  run- 
ning the  inefficiency  and  trying  to  make  fear,  weakness, 
meanness  work. 

This  is  where  the  Put-Through  Clan  of  the  Air  Line 
League  comes  in.  The  Put-Through  Clan  will  throw  the 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     285 

local  and  national  influence  of  twenty  million  consumers 
on  to  the  side  of  spirited  or  team-work  capital  and  labor, 
and  will  discourage,  make  ridiculous  and  impossible,  the 
scared  fighting  capital  and  the  scared  fighting  labor  with 
which  we  are  now  being  troubled. 

The  real  line  of  demarcation  in  modern  industry  is  not 
between  capital  and  labor,  but  between  spirited  capital 
and  labor  that  want  to  work,  create  and  construct,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  unspirited  capital  and  labor,  working 
as  little  and  thinking  as  little  as  they  can,  on  the  other. 

The  majority  of  revolutionaries  are  people  wKo  with- 
out taking  any  trouble  to  study  or  understand  anything, 
or  to  change  anything,  just  turn  it  thoughtlessly  upside 
down — substitute  their  inefficiency  for  the  other  man's. 

Extreme  revolutionaries  generally  talk  about  freedom, 
but  until  they  can  get  us  to  believe  they  are  going  to 
allow  freedom  to  others,  the  world  is  not  going  to  let 
them — of  all  people,  have  any. 

The  bottom  fact  about  revolutionary  labor  like  revolu- 
tionary capital  is  that  it  is  tired.  Revolutionary  labor  is 
not  spirited.  It  is  as  soggy-minded,  thoughtless  and 
automatic  to  be  a  revolutionist  to-day  as  it  is  to  be  a 
Louis  XVI. 

It  takes  originality  to  construct  and  to  change  things 
and  change  the  hearts  and  minds  of  people  and  the  spirit 
of  a  nation. 

Anybody  can  be  a  revolutionist  or  a  reactionary.  All 
one  has  to  do  is  1.  stop  thinking  and  sag,  or  stop  think- 
ing and  slash. 


The  mills  of  the  gods  grind  slowly  because  they  grind 
fine.  The  main  difference  between  men  and  the  gods  is 
that  when  men  do  things  on  a  large  scale  they  are  apt 


286      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

to  slur  things  over  and  be  mechanical,  do  things  in  huge 
empty  swoops — pass  over  details  and  particular  persons, 
and  the  gods  when  they  do  things  on  a  large  scale  pay 
more  attention  to  details,  to  microbes. and  to  particular 
persons  than  ever. 


In  national  issues  of  capital  and  labor,  the  opinions 
of  employers  and  workmen  who  have  worked  out  a  way 
of  meeting  the  crisis  on  a  smaller  scale,  who  understand 
one  another  on  a  five  or  six  hundred  scale  instead  of  a 
two  or  three  million  scale,  would  be  treated  by  the  Air 
Line  League  as  probably  weighty  and  conclusive.  Those 
classes  of  employers  and  employees  who  in  a  marked 
degree  have  failed  to  have  the  brains  to  understand  each 
other  even  in  the  flesh  and  at  hand  with  both  "persons  in 
view  themselves,  must  expect  to  have  their  national 
opinions  about  national  labor  and  national  capital  dis- 
counted by  the  Clan.  The  Put-Through  Clan  nationall}' 
will  grade  the  listening  and  ranking  of  the  demands  of 
industrial  groups  upon  the  assumption  that  people  who 
slur  over  what  is  next  door  are  not  apt  to  be  deep  about, 
things  that  are  further  away. 

§  7.  The  Town  Fireplace. 

The  outstanding  fact  about  our  modern  machine  civili- 
zation and  its  troubles  is  that  crowd-thinking  has  seized 
the  people — that  people  see  things  and  do  things  gre- 
gariously. We  have  herds  of  fractions  of  men,  acting  as 
fractions  of  men  and  not  as  human  beings. 

Each  fraction  is  trying  to  get  the  whole  country  to 
be  a  fraction.  Being  a  fraction  themselves  they  want  a 
fraction  of  a  country. 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     287 

Ten  differing  men  can  get  together  and  agree. 

Ten  differing  crowds  of  men — of  the  same  men,  will 
get  together  and  fight. 

Crowds  are  self-hypnotized.  A  man  who  would  not 
be  hypnotized  off  into  a  fraction  of  a  man  alone,  with 
enough  men  to  help  him  becomes  a  thousandth  or  ten 
thousandth  of  a  man  in  twenty  minutes. 

If  five  crowds  of  a  hundred  thousand  men  each  could 
sit  down  together  around  a  fireplace  and  listen  to  the 
others — if  each  crowd  of  a  hundred  thousand  could  feel 
listened  to  absolutely — listened  to  by  the  other  four  hun- 
dred thousand,  for  one  evening,  democracy  would  be  safe 
for  the  world  in  the  morning. 

As  it  is,  each  crowd  sits  in  Madison  Square  Garden 
alone — holds  a  vast  lonely  reverie  all  alone,  hypnotizes 
itself  and  then  goes  out  and  fights. 

Of  course  there  are  the  crowds  on  paper,  too.  Ink- 
mobs  roam  the  streets. 

Crowds  do  not  get  on  as  individual  persons  do,  be- 
cause individual  crowds  cannot  get  physically  and  hu- 
manly together. 

It  has  been  generally  noted  that  the  best  radical  labor 
leaders  who  come  into  definite  personal  contact  with 
employers  grow  quite  generally  conservative  and  that 
the  best  conservative  leaders  become  what  would  have 
once  seemed  to  them  radical  when  they  really  learn  how 
to  lead. 

"Why  is  it  that  when  they  begin  to  learn  as  leaders 
how  things  really  are,  they  are  so  often  impeached  by 
the  crowds  they  represent — by  capital  and  labor? 

The  moment  there  are  conveniences  for  crowds — for 
the  rank  and  file  of  crowds  to  catch  up  to  their  leaders, 
to  see  things  whole,  too — the  moment  we  have  the  ma- 


288      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

chinery  for  crowds  being  able  to  have  the  spiritual  and 
personal  experiences  their  leaders  have  with  the  other 
side,  crowds  will  stop  dismissing  their  leaders — the 
moment  they  see  both  sides,  and  get  practical,  too. 

The  purpose  of  the  local  chapter  of  the  Put-Through 
Clan,  is  to  find  a  means  in  each  town  of  getting  all 
crowds  and  groups  together  regularly  as  one  group  re- 
vealing themselves,  listening  and  being  listened  to,  and 
confiding  themselves  to  team-thinking  and  to  doing  team- 
work together. 

The  Put-Through  Clan  headquarters  in  a  town  will  be 
the  Town  Fireplace  for  Crowds.  It  will  be  the  warmest, 
liveliest,  manliest,  most  genial  resort  in  town — where 
all  the  live  men  and  real  men  who  seek  real  contacts  and 
care  about  men  who  do,  will  get  together.  The  refresh- 
ing and  emancipating  experience  many  men  had  in  army 
camps  will  be  carried  on  and  become  a  daily  force  in 
the  daily  life  of  every  town  in  America. 

§  8.  The  Sign  on  the  World. 

I  looked  up  yesterday  and  saw  a  sign  on  a  church  in 
New  York.  I  like  it  better  every  time  I  go  by. 

THIS  CHURCH  IS  OPEN  ALL  DAY  EVERY  DAY 
FOR  PRAYER,  MEDITATION  AND  BUSINESS. 

I  have  been  wondering  just  who  the  man  is  who  had 
the  horse-sense  and  piety  to  take  up  the  secret  of  busi- 
ness and  the  grip  of  religion  both,  telegraph  them  into 
ten  words  like  this,  and  make  a  stone  church  say  them 
at  people  a  thousand  a  minute,  on  the  busiest  part  of 
the  busiest  street  in  New  York. 

Whoever  the  man  is,  he  stands  for  the  business  men 
we  want  for  the  Put-Through  Clan  first. 


PUT-THROUGH  CLAN  PUTS  THROUGH     289 

One  of  the  first  things  the  Put-Through  Clan  is  going 
to  dramatize  is  this  sign  on "  the  Marble  Collegiate 
Church. 

The  men  in  America  in  the  next  twenty  years  who 
are  going  to  carry  everything  before  them  in  business, 
drive  everybody  and  everything  out  of  their  way,  take 
possession  of  the  great  streets  and  the  great  factories  in 
the  name  of  God  and  the  people,  are  the  men  who  prac- 
tice- daily  the  spirit  of  this  sign,  the  men  in  business 
who  refuse  to  go  tumty-tumming  along  in  a  kind  of 
thoughtless  inertia  of  motion,  doing  what  everybody's 
doing  in  business — the  men  who  turn  one  side  (by  what- 
ever name  they  call  it)  to  pray,  to  snuggle  up  to  God 
and  think. 

Men  who  have  success  before  them  in  business  are  the 
men  who  have  the  most  imagination  in  business. 

Imagination  with  most  of  us  consists  in  taking  time 
to  see  things  before  other  people  do,  in  connecting  up 
what  we  do  with  its  larger,  deeper,  more  permanent  re- 
lations, relating  what  we  do  to  ourselves,  to  others, 
to  our  time  and  generation,  to  the  things  we  have  done 
before  and  to  the  things  that  must  be  done  next. 

"Prayer,  Meditation  and  Business." 

It  is  wonderful  how  these  words,  when  one  comes  on 
a  man  who  does  not  say  anything  about  it  and  puts  them 
together,  tone  each  other  up. 

The  first  thing  the  Put-Through  Clan  is  going  to  do 
in  a  town  in  this  present  tipply  and  tragic  world,  is  to 
stand  by  and  help  make  known  to  everybody  across  a 
continent  the  men  in  business  who  stand  by  these  words 
— who  mix  them  so  people  cannot  tell  them  apart. 


BOOK  VI 

THE  PEOPLE  EXPECT  OF  THE 
PRESIDENT 


THE  BIG  BROTHER  OF   THE  PEOPLE 

IF  I  were  writing  a  book  to  be  used  during  a  Presi- 
dential campaign,  used  as  a  handbook  of  the  beliefs 
of  the  people — a  book  in  the  next  few  weeks  for  a  nation 
to  say  yes  or  no  to,  for  a  great  people  to  go  before 
their  conventions  with,  the  first  belief  I  would  put  down 
for  the  new  President  to  run  on  would  be  the  belief  that 
every  man  in  this  country  is  a  bigger,  better  and  truer 
man  than  the  present  arrangements  of  our  industrial  and 
social  life  seem  willing  to  let  h.im  express. 

"We  are  all  practically  waiting  in  crowds  to-day,  all 
over  this  country — in  held-in  and  held-back  crowds,  to 
act  better  than  we  look. 

This  belief  is  the  first  belief — the  first  practical  work- 
ing belief  the  next  President  of  this  country  should 
have  about  the  people. 

Putting  this  belief  forward  as  a  hardheaded  every-day 
working  belief  about  human  nature  in  America,  is  going 
to  be  the  way  to  get  a  President  for  our  next  President 
who  shall  release  the  spirit  of  the  nation,  and  reveal  to 
a  world  not  only  in  promise  but  in  action  that  the  people 
of  America  are  as  great  a  people,  as  true,  level-eyed 
and  steady-hearted  a  people  as  the  spent  and  weary 
peoples  of  Europe  have  hoped  we  were. 

The  trouble  with  America  in  her  own  eyes  and  the 
eyes  of  the  world  to-day,  is  not  that  we  are  not  what 
has  been  hoped  of  us,  but  that  the  industrial  machine 

293 


294     THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

we  have  heaped  up  on  our  backs,  does  not  let  us  express 
ourselves  to  ourselves  or  to  others  as  we  really  are. 

The  first  moment  we  find  that  as  clear-cut  conclusive 
and  perfect  arrangements  are  made  for  people's  being 
good  as  are  now  being  made  for  their  being  bad,  the 
goodness  in  each  man  and  in  each  class  in  America, 
which  now  takes  the  form  of  telling  other  men  and  other 
classes,  they  ought  to  be  good — the  goodness  in  each 
man  which  in  our  present  system  he  bottles  up  until  a 
more  convenient  season,  or  lets  peter  out  into  good  ad- 
vice, will  under  our  new  machine  or  our  modified  sys- 
tem, be  allowed  to  the  man  himself.  No  man  with  things 
as  they  are  now  going,  can  feel  quite  safe  just  now  with 
his  own  private  goodness.  He  has  to  run  to  the  labor 
unions  or  the  Manufacturers'  Association  to  make  sure 
he  has  a  right  to  be  as  good  or  as  human  or  as  reason- 
able as  he  wants  to  be.  No  man  feels  he  can  let  him- 
self go  and  be  as  good  as  he  likes,  because  nobody  else 
is  doing  it  and  because  there  is  no  provision  for  what 
happens  to  a  man  now,  and  happens  to  him  quick,  who 
is  being  more  good  than  he  has  to  be. 

The  mean  things  we  are  doing  on  a  large  scale  to  one 
another  just  now  in  America,  are  not  mean  things  it  is 
our  nature  to  do.  We  have  let  our  machines  get  on  top 
of  us  and  wave  our  meanness  at  people  over  our  heads. 
Our  machines  which  capital  and  labor  have  for  ex- 
pressing us  as  employers  and  workmen  to  one  another, 
caricature  us. 

All  one  has  to  do  to  see  this,  is  to  look  about  and 
observe  the  way  in  which  our  present  machines  of  trusts 
and  labor  unions  are  working  together  to  make  a  dollar 
worth  fifty  cents. 

The  reason  the  dollar  is  only  worth  fifty  cents  is  that 


THE  BIG  BROTHER  OF  THE  PEOPLE     295 

nearly  everybody  who  has  anything  to  do  with  the  dol- 
lar feels  conscientiously  that  he  owes  it  to  himself  and 
to  his  class  to  furnish  as  little  work  for  a  dollar  as  he 
dares  and  take  a  dollar  for  fifty  cents'  worth  of  work. 

Each  man  sees  this  several  times  a  day,  but  he  belongs 
to  a  vast  machine  for  getting  something  for  nothing. 
Every  man  knows  in  his  heart  that  the  cure  for  every- 
body's trying  to  get  something  for  nothing  is  every- 
body's at  once  getting  to  work  doing  more  than  he  has 
to  for  the  money.  Then  the  American  dollar  will  quit 
being  worth  fifty  cents. 

AYhy  doesn't  he  do  it?  Because  the  machinery  he 
belongs  with  and  that  everybody  belongs  with  consists 
of  two  great  something-for-nothing  machines.  Both  of 
these  stupendous  machines  of  capital  and  labor  are 
geared  for  backing  in  producing  and  not  for  going  for- 
ward. All  that  has  to  be  done  with  them  is  to  run 
them  the  other  way  round  and  we  have  what  we  want. 

People  on  both  sides  admit  in  a  vague  anonymous 
scattered  fashion  that  the  way  to  meet  a  situation  in 
which  prices  are  too  high  is  for  everybody  to  produce 
more  and  to  charge  less  for  what  he  produces. 

But  labor  will  not  do  this  if  capital  does  not  do  it. 

Capital  will  not  do  this  if  labor  does  not  do  it. 

It  cannot  be  done  by  one  man  getting  up  all  alone  and 
saying  he  will  get  on  with  half  a  profit  or  half  a  wage 
when  he  sees  everybody  about  him  getting  on  with  twice 
as  much. 

The  only  way  it  can  be  done  is  by  organizing,  by  ar- 
ranging machines  for  mutual  frank  expression,  confes- 
sion and  cooperation — mutual  confession  and  coopera- 
tion by  the  men  in  each  industry  saying,  "I  will  if  you 
will,"  until  we  cover  the  nation. 


296     THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

This  is  one  of  the  first  things  anti-Bolshevik  capital 
and  anti-Bolshevik  labor  are  going  to  stand  for — the 
organizing  and  advertising  in  their  own  industry  of  a 
voluntary  understanding  and  professional  producing 
among  men  who  produce. 

The  men  who  are  increasing  the  cost  of  flour  by  having 
too  high  wages  in  flour  mills,  will  say  to  men  who  are 
increasing  the  cost  of  cotton  by  too  high  wages  in  cot- 
ton mills,  "We  will  make  cheaper  cotton  for  you,  if  you 
will  make  cheaper  flour  for  us. ' ' 

It  is  not  a  matter  of  meanness  in  American  human 
nature  we  are  dealing  with,  it  is  a  matter  of  agreement 
between  men — hundreds  and  thousands  and  millions  of 
men,  who  do  not  feel  mean  or  want  to  be  mean  and  who 
are  trying  to  slink  out  of  it. 

The  thing  cannot  be  done  without  mutual  agreement 
and  the  agreement  probably  cannot  be  made  without 
voluntary  contagious  publicity,  without  organizing  a 
national  "I  will  if  you  will"  between  capital  and  labor. 
The  men  who  produce  with  their  minds  will  say  to  those 
who  work  with  their  hands,  "We  will  agree  to  take  less 
profits  and  reduce  the  prices  that  you  pay  for  goods, 
if  you  will  agree  to  take  less  wages  and  produce  more. ' ' 

Capital  will  say  to  labor,  "If  you  will  produce  ten 
per  cent  more,  we  will  scale  down  prices,  make  your 
dollar  buy  twenty  per  cent  more.  For  every  sacrifice 
by  which  you  make  a  dollar  buy  more,  we  will  make  twice 
the  sacrifice." 

Having  a  larger  margin  and  more  time  to  think  things 
out  than  men  who  work  with  their  hands  have  to  think 
things  out,  many  employers  are  going  to  feel  that  it  is 
up  to  them  not  to  ask  their  men  to  do  anything  they 
do  not  do  twice  as  much  of  themselves.  They  will  have 


THE  BIG  BROTHER  OF  THE  PEOPLE     297 

machinery  for  being  confidential  with  the  men  and  for 
letting  the  men  see  they  are  doing  it. 

Instead  of  having  everybody  rushing  wildly  around 
organizing  to  say  "I  won't  if  you  won  t"  we  will  ar- 
range to  have  a  hundred  thousand  pi  ked  capitalists 
and  picked  laboring  men  in  ten  thousand  cities,  who 
will  set  going  everywhere  a  huge  public  voluntary  na- 
tional "I  WILL  IF  YOU  WILL." 

Instead  of  proceeding  from  now  on  to  assume  that  we 
are  a  mean  people  in  America,  and  making  larger  and 
more  handsome  arrangements  for  being  meaner  than 
ever,  still  mightier  engines  for  bracing  against  each 
other,  we  will  turn  to  all  together  and  make  in  the  next 
four  years  a  machine  together  that  will  express  our 
better  natures  as  well  as  our  present  one  does  our  worst 
ones. 

There  is  one  thing  we  propose  to  stand  out  for  and 
that  we  do  not  intend  to  be  wheedled  out  of,  in  our  next 
two  political  conventions  and  during  our  next  Presi- 
dent's next  four  years,  and  that  is  that  our  two  great 
machines  in  this  country,  our  industrial  one  and  our 
political  one,  shall  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  men 
who  are  fooled  about  themselves  and  who  will  not  listen 
to  others. 

We  do  not  believe  that  there  is  anything  essentially 
the  matter  with  what  is  called  our  capitalistic  system 
or  our  labor  union  system  except  men — the  men  who 
think  they  belong  in  the  front  ranks  of  capital  and  the 
front  ranks  of  labor. 

The  scared  men  and  the  men  who  are  fooled  about 
themselves  in  politics  and  business  and  who  are  trying 
to  fool  the  rest  of  us,  who  are  trying  to  make  a  great, 
simple,  clean-hearted,  clear-eyed,  generous  country  like 


298      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

ours  look  and  act  every  few  weeks  or  every  few  days  as  if 
all  the  people  in  i  could  really  do  to  express  themselves 
to  one  another  and  to  the  world,  was  with  lockouts, 
strikes,  political  d  adlocks,  minority  holdups  and  party 
threats — shall  be  i  irned  out  of  office  by  the  people  and 
huddled  away  out  of  sight. 

In  our  industrial  and  political  expressing  and  acting 
machines  on  every  hand  we  give  notice  we  are  going  to 
pick  men  out,  men  who  shall  make  our  machines  express 
us,  our  freedom,  our  justice,  our  steadiness  of  heart,  and 
our  belief  in  America,  in  ourselves,  in  one  another,  or 
our  desire  to  listen  to  those  who  disagree  with  us,  our 
human  sporting  instinct  about  our  party  and  ourselves, 
and  the  victory  of  the  people,  the  common  sense  and 
good  will  of  common  human  nature  in  America  and  the 
world. 

To  the  great  capitalists  who  instead  of  being  fellow 
laborers,  are  still  mooning  absent-mindedly  about  in  the 
last  century,  still  prinking  themselves  as  the  owners  of 
their  world,  and  still  thinking  of  themselves  as  the 
captains  or  military  leaders  of  industry — to  the  labor 
union  Dukes  and  Dictators  that  capitalists  like  this  have 
created  to  fight  them — the  hundred  million  people  ap- 
pointed to  run  this  country,  give  notice. 


I  would  like  if  I  could  to  publish  this  book  with  blank 
pages  for  a  few  million  signatures — and  a  place  for  the 
new  President  or  proposed  President  to  sign,  too. 

The  Presidential  candidate  we  want,  would  have  it  in 
him  to  put  his  name  down  with  the  rest — with  something 
like  this,  perhaps — "I  do  not  say  I  could  sign  every 
paragraph  in  this  book,  but  the  general  idea  and  pro- 
gram of  organizing  and  giving  body  to  the  will  of  the 


THE  BIG  BROTHER  OF  THE  PEOPLE     299 

people  as  expressed  in  this  book — the  spirit  and  direc- 
tion of  it  and  in  the  main  the  technique  for  getting  it, 
I  sign  for." 

I  believe  that  the  American  people  when  they  know 
in  reality,  as  they  do  know  at  heart,  what  I  am  believ- 
ing in  this  book,  would  be  inclined  in  looking  up  their 
candidate  for  President  to  pick  out  a  President  who 
would  have  written  this  book — the  gist  of  it — if  he  had 
had  time. 

At  all  events  here  it  is — this  program  or  handbook 
of  the  beliefs  for  a  people. 

I  put  it  forth  as  being  more  concrete  than  political 
party  platforms  are — and  as  a  practical  and  plain  way 
for  a  nation  to  look  over  a  President,  find  him  out,  and 
follow  him  up. 


II 


THB  MAN  WHO  CARRIES  THE  BUNCH  OF  KEYS  FOB 
THE  NATION 

THE  crowds  have  to  be  unlocked  to  each,  other.  The 
temperament  of  our  President  for  the  next  four 
years,  in  its  bearing  on  the  mood  of  the  nation,  is  to  be 
the  temperament  of  unlocking  the  crowds  to  each  other. 
At  present  it  looks  as  if  our  President  for  the  next 
four  years  would  be  perhaps  the  loneliest  President 
America  ever  had.  "When  our  next  President,  when  he 
gets  into  the  White  House,  looks  at  our  people  and  hears 
what  they  say  and  watches  what  they  do,  he  could  not 
but  have  times  of  being  lonely  with  the  people.  The 
people  are  lonely  with  one  another.  Anybody  can  go 
out  into  the  street  anywhere  in  America  to-night  and 
be  lonely  about  the  peace  treaty,  the  world  war,  or  civil 
war.  Any  man  can  take  any  crowded  street  and  see  for 
himself.  He  can  pass  miles  of  men  who  in  their  hearts 
are  calling  him  a  coward  because  he  has  one  idea  of  how 
to  defend  America  and  they  have  another.  If  one  were 
to  take  any  ten  blocks  of  Broadway  and  let  all  the  peo- 
ple walking  along  stop  just  where  they  are  and  begin 
talking  with  the  men  right  next  to  them  about  what  we 
ought  to  do  in  this  war,  they  will  begin  thinking  they 
are  not  Americans,  wanting  to  throw  each  other  off 
over  the  edge  of  the  country — partitioning  each  other 
off  into  mollycoddles,  traitors,  pussy-foots,  safety-firsts, 
bullies,  braggarts  and  Bolshevists  and  pacifists — and 

300 


THE  MAN  WHO  CARRIES  THE  KEYS      301 

while  they  might  keep  up  appearances  and  try  to  be 
polite  on  the  surface  with  strangers,  that  whole  section 
of  Broadway  would  be  mad  all  through  for  ten  blocks. 
One  would  have  ten  blocks  of  feeling  superior  and  de- 
spising people — every  man  looking  askance  at  every 
other  man  for  having  a  different  idea  of  America  from 
his  idea  of  America. 

If  the  President  were  to  steal  along  through  the  ten 
blocks  and  overhear  the  people,  he  would  feel  lonely 
with  them.  The  only  way  not  to  feel  lonely  on  ten  blocks 
of  Broadway  just  now  would  be  to  put  up  signs  and 
labels  over  doors  of  theaters  and  announce  speakers 
and  check  people  off  as  they  go  along,  into  separate 
audiences.  The  League  of  Nations  or  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  would  sort  out  a  thousand  people  on 
Broadway  and  coop  them  up  in  a  hall  to  agree  with  each 
other,  and  the  I.  "W.  ~W.  could  sort  out  another  thousand 
and  coop  them  up  in  a  hall  to  agree  with  each  other, 
but  if  there  ever  were  any  way  of  holding  down  a  whole 
hallful  of  people  and  making  them  listen  hard  to  an- 
other whole  hallful  of  people,  all  that  would  be  left  after 
a  minute  of  listening  would  be  each  audience  shouting 
pooh!  pooh!  to  the  other  audience  and  saying  "You  are 
not  America.  We  only  are  America!" 

This  makes  the  President  lonely.  We  elected  him  a 
few  months  ago  to  be  President  of  all  of  us.  It  is  slow 
work  being  President,  being  a  good  mixer,  when  there 
are  ten  groups  of  people  who  will  not  listen  and  who 
all  turn  on  you  and  hate  you,  rend  you  if  you  try  to 
get  them  to  listen  to  each  other. 

The  way  the  President  is  going  to  meet  this  issue  and 
insist  until  we  all  thank  him  for  it — on  being  President 
of  all  of  us,  is  with  his  temperament. 


Ill 

THE  PRESIDENT'S  TEMPERAMENT 

IF  I  were  writing  a  book  for  the  next  President  to  run 
for  President  on — a  thing  I  have  guilty  moments  of 
hoping  I  am  doing — the  first  thing  I  would  arrange  for 
in  the  book,  would  be  to  put  down  in  it  two  platforms 
for  him  to  run  on — one  platform  on  what  he  believes  and 
the  other  platform — the  way  he  believes  it  and  gets  other 
people  to  believe  it. 

The  way  the  next  President  we  pick  out,  does  his  be- 
lieving, the  way  he  keeps  from  believing  weakly  what 
he  wants  to,  and  from  being  fooled  about  his  party  and 
about  himself,  the  elean-cutness  and  honesty  of  his 
mind,  the  tone,  the  ring  in  which  he  believes  in  himself 
and  gets  other  people  to  believe  in  him,  is  going  to  be, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  his  getting  for  this  country  at 
home  and  abroad,  what  it  wants,  the  most  important 
thing  about  him. 

The  most  important  part  of  the  next  President 's  plat- 
form is  going  to  be,  in  the  eyes  of  the  people,  his  char- 
acter, his  temperament,  'the  way  his  personal  traits  and 
habits  dramatize  what  he  says,  the  way  he  lives  what 
he  believes. 

The  American  people  may  not  be  shrewd  about  seers, 
or  about  historians  or  philosophers,  but  they  are  very 
likely  any  minute  to  be  deep  about  people.  "When  Henry 
Cabot  Lodge  draws  a  rough  sketch  in  chalk  of  history 

302 


THE  PRESIDENT'S  TEMPERAMENT       303 

he  wants  a  hundred  million  people  to  help  him  make, 
and  when  he  is  being  fooled  about  it  and  is  all  out  of 
perspective  the  people  may  defer  to  him,  may  feel  Mr. 
Lodge  is  too  deep  for  them,  but  the  moment  they  see  Mr. 
Lodge  being  fooled  about  himself,  they  find  Mr.  Lodge 
easy. 

In  a  trait  in  human  nature  like  this,  with  which  they 
are  familiar  every  day,  a  hundred  million  people — with- 
out trying,  are  deep. 

If  a  hundred  million  people  could  sit  down  and  write 
a  book — a  book  or  open  letter  addressed  in  the  next  two 
months  to  those  two  big  vague,  whoofy  Nobodies  we  call 
our  Political  Parties,  and  tell  them  in  so  many  words 
the  kind  of  President  the  people  want  and  understand — 
the  kind  of  President  the  people  would  sweep  in  un- 
speakably into  the  White  House  when  they  saw  him,  no 
matter  what  any  politician  said,  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
it  would  be  found — when  the  book  by  the  hundred  mil- 
lion people  was  out,  that  our  people  feel  on  the  whole 
that  we  could  not  have  anything  better  in  our  country 
for  our  next  President  than  a  man  who  would  be  a 
lawyer  backwards. 

What  the  platform  of  personality  we  want  our  next 
President  to  have  amounts  to,  is  this — Know  everything 
a  lawyer  knows.  Have  everything  a  lawyer  has — and 
just  turn  it  around  and  use  it  the  other  way  and  be  an- 
other kind  of  man  about  it. 

The  fate  of  America  and  the  fate  of  the  world  may 
be  said  to  be  turning  to-day  on  the  degree  during  the 
next  four  years,  during  the  next  President's  adminis- 
tration, the  American  people  and  all  groups  of  the  peo- 
ple, stop  believing  weakly  what  they  want  to  believe 
and  face  the  facts  about  themselves. 


304     THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

In  order  to  be  efficient,  in  order  to  be  free  or  even  to 
have  enough  to  eat,  millions  of  American  men  and  women 
of  all  groups  and  classes  of  the  people  have  got  to  be 
capable  and  show  that  they  are  capable  of  changing 
their  minds  about  themselves. 

Everything  we  are  hoping  to  do  turns  upon  our  recog- 
nizing as  a  people,  standing  out  from  the  rest  and  push- 
ing forward  to  lead  us,  men  who  know  more  than  most 
of  us  know,  men  who  are  practiced  in  keeping  their  own 
minds  open  and  can  therefore  open  ours. 

Instead  of  having  for  the  next  President  of  this  coun- 
try a  man  who  braces  people,  who  tightens  people  up 
in  their  convictions,  or  who  drives  the  old  beliefs  they 
want  to  believe  further  down  into  them  and  makes  them 
believe  them  harder,  we  are  going  to  put  in  our  demand 
for  a  President  who  is  the  engineer  of  the  will  of  the 
people,  who  draws  people  out,  who  has  the  common 
sense,  the  reality,  the  sense  of  humor  and  the  human- 
ness  to  look  facts  and  folks  in  the  eyes,  who  keeps  people 
on  all  sides  who  have  dealings  with  him  from  being 
fooled  about  themselves,  a  man  who  makes  people  real 
when  they  are  with  him,  who  makes  them  when  they 
even  think  of  him,  real  with  themselves  and  real  with 
one  another,  and  real  in  politics. 

I  mean  by  a  man's  being  real  in  politics,  being  a 
politician  backwards,  keeping  open  to  facts  acting  and 
preferring  to  act  as  children  and  strong  men  act,  with 
the  deepness  and  directness  of  the  child. 

The  hundred  million  people  in  the  book  they  would 
write  if  they  had  time,  put  in  their  demand  for  a  big 
simple  fellow  human  being  in  the  White  House,  a  man 
anybody  can  understand,  a  man  who  does  things  with 


people  and  gets  things  out  of  people  because  he  makes 
people  feel  they  know  him. 

The  political  parties  cannot  help  themselves  the  mo- 
ment the  people  speak.  They  would  rather  slide  in  a 
man  who  does  not  see  through  them  if  they  could,  per- 
haps, but  the  great  political  party  that  sees  first  and 
sees  best,  that  only  a  man  who  sees  through  it  and  who 
will  go  into  the  White  House  to  keep  on  seeing  through 
it,  can  be  elected,  will  sweep  this  country  as  clean  as  a 
whistle. 


IV 

THE  PRESIDENT 's  RELIGION 

I  HAVE  always  given  homage  as  probably  to  the  best 
men  of  their  time,  to  the  old  monks  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  who  climbed  up  on  mountain  tops  and  lived  in 
monasteries  alone  with  God.  If  I  felt  just  as  they  felt 
about  being  superlatively  religious  and  wanted  to  pick 
out  and  proceed  to  live  the  most  deeply,  intricately  re- 
ligious life  I  could  think  of  I  would  refuse  to  look  like 
a  saint  and  be  President  of  the  American  Board  of 
Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions,  and  would  pick  out 
the  most  difficult  business  with  the  most  difficult  class 
of  men  to  compete  with  in  the  United  States.  Then  I 
would  go  into  it,  put  all  my  money  and  all  my  religion 
together  into  it. 

The  principles  and  standards  that  actually  obtain  in 
competition  constitute  in  any  nation  the  core  of  the  re- 
ligion of  the  people.  One  might  say  cooperation  of 
course,  but  what  makes  cooperation  powerful  and  what 
selects  the  people  who  shall  lead  cooperation — what  gives 
it  character,  dignity  and  power,  is  the  thing  in  each 
man  which  inspires  him  to  find  a  way  to  do  or  not  to  do 
certain  things — when  he  competes. 

Competition — the  way  a  man  threads  his  way  through 
the  men  who  compete  with  him — would  constitute  the 
highest,  purest  test  of  a  man 's  sense  of  spiritual  values — 
the  real  monastery  of  modern  life. 

306 


THE  PRESIDENT'S  RELIGION  307 

All  any  man  can  do,  all  society  can  do  with  some  peo- 
ple is  either  to  refuse  to  compete  with  them,  ostracize 
them,  socially  and  industrially,  or  clap  them  into  jail. 

There  always  must  be  these  people  who  cannot  stand 
in  line  in  a  queue  and  be  fair.  The  Government,  the 
police  and  the  draft  have  to  deal  with  them.  As  for  the 
rest  of  us,  competition — fair,  manly,  sporting  competi- 
tion, keeps  us  straight,  gives  us  the  manlier  and  nobler 
virtue,  the  knowledge  of  ourselves  and  others  that  make 
cooperation  a  noble  as  well  as  practical  course  of  pro- 
cedure. 

The  way  a  man  runs  a  church  or  any  disinterested 
enterprise  is  not  to  be  compared  as  a  test  of  the  man's 
real  spiritual  or  religious  value  to  the  state — to  the 
way  he  runs  an  interested  enterprise  or  business. 

If  I  were  the  rich  young  man  in  the  New  Testament 
I  would  not  have  sold  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor — as 
that  particular  person  (being  what  he  was)  was  advised 
to.  I  would  hold  on  to  my  money — and  found  a  re- 
ligious order  with  it.  I  would  make  a  whip  of  cords  of 
my  money  and  my  brains  woven  together  and  would 
drive  out  the  peddlers,  the  economic  fiddlers,  the  moral 
and  business  idiots  out  of  the  Temple.  -I  would  do  it 
not  by  being  a  pure,  sterilized,  holy-looking  person,  but 
by  having  more  imagination  in  business,  by  using  higher 
levels  and  higher  voltage  of  human  motive  power  in 
business  than  they  can  use,  by  having  more  brains  about 
human  nature  than  they  have,  and  by  my  power  to  get 
the  public  to  be  religious,  i.e.,  my  power  as  a  sheer  matter 
of  business,  to  make  the  public  prefer,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  my  way  of  competing  in  business  until  it  drives 
out  and  makes  absent-minded,  mooning,  feeble  and  short- 
sighted, theirs. 


308      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

This  is  not  the  kind  of  thing  that  I  happen  to  have 
the  natural  technique  or  gift  to  do — to  found  a  live  deep 
natural  religious  order  like  this,  but  there  are  thousands 
of  men  I  know  and  that  other  men  know  in  America, 
who  have  the  natural  typical  American  technique  for 
putting  their  higher  gifts  to  work  in  business  and  who 
are  crowding  to  the  wall  men  who  can  only  use  their 
lower  ones,  and  the  power,  the  opportunities  that  go  with 
these  men  are  daily  being  outlined  by  events  and  daily 
being  sketched  out  before  our  eyes. 

The  way  to  be  a  prophet  and  to  interpret  and  estab- 
lish in  a  nation  is  to  lead  in  the  business  world  to-day 
in  establishing  principles  of  competition,  which  exalt 
and  interpret  human  nature,  free  the  common  sense,  the 
will,  the  glory  and  the  religion  of  the  people. 

The  way  to  be  a  President,  the  next  four  years,  is  to 
use  the  White  House  and  all  the  resources  of  the  Gov- 
ernment to  cooperate  with  and  back  up  this  type  of 
American  business  man. 


THE    RED   FLAG   AND    THE    WHITE    HOUSE 

THE  first  qualification  the  next  President  should  run 
for  the  Presidency  on  is  his  vision  or  program  for 
the  nation  with  regard  to  backing  up  men  in  American 
life — democracy  and  the  Red  Flag. 

The  first  thing  a  President  should  see  about  the  Red 
Flag  is  that  the  Red  Flag  is  up  to  the  people  and  not 
up  to  the  "White  House — up  to  the  people  in  five  hundred 
thousand  factories  and  offices  and  stores,  up  to  the  peo- 
ple on  both  sides  of  a  hundred  thousand  counters,  up  to 
everybody  who  buys  a  paper  of  pins  or  a  pound  of 
cheese  while  they  are  buying  it,  up  to  everybody  who 
buys  a  house  or  a  watch  or  a  cake  of  soap,  a  safety  razor 
or  a  railroad,  up  to  everybody  while  he  is  producing, 
while  he  is  buying  and  selling,  up  to  everybody  in- 
dividually and  collectively  to  see  that  in  every  ten  cents 
they  spend  in  this  country  and  every  ten  minutes  they 
work  in  this  country,  the  Red  Flag — the  civil  war  flag, 
is  stamped  on. 

Only  the  people  can  head  off  the  R-ed  Flag — all  of  the 
people  working  on  it  on  their  daily  job  all  of  the  time. 

The  more  our  President  believes  that  the  work  of  deal- 
ing with  the  Red  Flag  in  this  country  is  up  to  the  peo- 
ple the  more  he  gets  the  people  to  believe  it,  puts  the 
work  off  on  the  people,  the  better  the  work  will  be  done, 
the  further  the  Red  Flag  will  be  from  getting  hold  of 

309 


310      THE  GHOST  IN  THE  WHITE  HOUSE 

the  country  and  the  longer  the  President  will  be  in  the 
White  House. 

We  call  our  President  our  Chief  Executive.  What  we 
put  him  in  the  White  House  and  make  him  our  chief 
executive  for  is  that  he  shall  have  imagination  about  a 
hundred  million  people  besides  himself,  that  he  shall 
have  imagination  about  what  the  people  can  do  and 
imagination  about  getting  them  to  do  it. 

An  executive  is  a  man  whose  work  is  making  other  peo- 
ple work. 

We  call  the  place  in  which  we  have  our  President  live 
the  Executive  Mansion.  The  best  man  to  elect  to  live 
in  it  is  the  man  who  can  make  a  hundred  million  people 
work. 


THE   END 


A     000286180     5 


